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Building, Signing & GitHub Release Publishing Guide

This guide covers building ReelLock release APKs from source, signing binaries, publishing releases on GitHub, and deploying MkDocs documentation to GitHub Pages.

Prerequisites

  • JDK: Java Development Kit 17 (OpenJDK 17 recommended).
  • Android SDK: API Level 34 (Android 14) installed.
  • Gradle: Gradle 8.2+ (managed automatically by Gradle Wrapper).
  • Android Studio: Android Studio Hedgehog (2023.1.1) or newer.

1. Compiling the Release APK

Execute ./gradlew assembleRelease from the terminal:

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/ReelLock/ReelLock.git
cd ReelLock

# Build Production Release APK
./gradlew assembleRelease

The output APK binary will be placed at: app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release-unsigned.apk (or app-release.apk if signing is configured in build.gradle.kts).

2. Signing Release Binaries

To produce a signed release build for publication:

  1. Generate a keystore (if you don't have one): 
    keytool -genkey -v -keystore reellock-release.jks -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000 -alias reellock

  2. Align and sign the APK: 

    # Zipalign the APK
zipalign -v -p 4 app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release-unsigned.apk ReelLock-v1.0.0.apk

# Sign using apksigner
apksigner sign --ks reellock-release.jks --ks-key-alias reellock --out ReelLock-v1.0.0.apk ReelLock-v1.0.0.apk

  3. Verify the signature: 

    apksigner verify ReelLock-v1.0.0.apk

3. Creating SHA-256 Checksums

Generate SHA-256 checksum for security verification:

sha256sum ReelLock-v1.0.0.apk > ReelLock-v1.0.0.apk.sha256
cat ReelLock-v1.0.0.apk.sha256

4. Creating a GitHub Release

  1. Navigate to your repository on GitHub: https://github.com/ReelLock/ReelLock/releases.
  2. Click Draft a new release.
  3. Set Tag version to v1.0.0.
  4. Set Release title to ReelLock v1.0.0 — Official Release.
  5. Paste release notes from CHANGELOG.md.
  6. Drag and drop the signed binary ReelLock-v1.0.0.apk and checksum file ReelLock-v1.0.0.apk.sha256 into the release binary attachment box.
  7. Click Publish release.

5. Hosting MkDocs Documentation on GitHub Pages

The ReelLock technical documentation site is powered by MkDocs and hosted directly on GitHub Pages.

Deployment via Command Line (gh-deploy)

# Install MkDocs and Material theme
pip install mkdocs mkdocs-material

# Deploy directly to the gh-pages branch
mkdocs gh-deploy --force

GitHub Actions Automated Deployment Workflow

Create .github/workflows/docs.yml: 

name: Deploy Documentation
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

permissions:
  contents: write

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: 3.x
      - run: pip install mkdocs-material
      - run: mkdocs gh-deploy --force

Once pushed, GitHub Pages will automatically serve the documentation site at: 👉 https://sohamtilekar.github.io/ReelLock/