Definition
The application downloaded and run on various devices/platforms. All applications must have an app_id which uniquely identifies them in Shorebird.
Example
The time_shift app is an example of an application. The corresponding app_id can be found in the shorebird.yaml file at the root of the project.
Definition
A release build of an application that is distributed to devices. A release can have zero or more patches applied to it.
Example
When we run a shorebird build ... or flutter build ... we are creating a release build which can be distributed to user's devices (usually via app stores). A release refers to a specific version of an application running on a device and is always associated with a release version (e.g. 1.0.0).
Definition
An over the air update which is applied to a specific release. All patches have a patch number (auto-incrementing integer) and multiple patches can be published for a given app release version.
Example
If we had an existing 1.0.0 release of time_shift available, we could publish a patch to version 1.0.0. This would result in "patch #1", there can be many patches to a given release, typically the latest is active and applied to devices in the field.
Definition
A tag used to manage the subset of installs that receive a patch. By default, a "stable" channel is created and used by devices to query for available patches.
Example
We can create a "development" and "staging" channels in addition to the "stable" channel and promote patches to those internal channels for testing before rolling them out to the general public.
Definition
An artifact contains metadata about the contents of a specific patch for a specific platform and architecture.
Example
Once a new patch is published, on the next launch the application will be notified of the new available patch and will download the artifact associated with that patch for the specific platform and architecture (e.g. 'android', 'aarch64').