Releasing your app

After you push your local changes to your Builder Instance using the Space CLI, you can turn your revision into an installable release by publishing your app.

There are two ways to publish your app:

Through the Space CLI
Through the Builder UI

Releases

To publish an app to Discovery, you need to create a release. A release is a copy others can use to install a personal copy of your app, in their Space. When they do so, they’ll be provisioned their own isolated resources to run the app.

Deta Space offers two types of releases:

Unlisted Releases
Listed Releases

An unlisted release is only accessible via a link Deta gives you when you release your app. Anyone you share the link with will be able to install this Release, but this link is not publicly discoverable.

A listed release is publicly discoverable from Deta Discovery’s homepage. Anyone who enters Discovery can find and install a listed application.

Releasing from the CLI

To publish your app using the Space CLI, navigate to your local project. You can create a new Unlisted Release using the following command:

space release

If it is your first release for a given project, you will be asked to confirm that you want to create a release. The CLI will ask you to select which revision you want to release. By default, it will use the latest one. After confirming, watch your app take off — it is now installable on Deta Space to anyone with the release url 🎉

If you want to publish your app as a listed release on Deta Discovery you can use the --listed flag:

space release --listed

It is recommended you add a Discovery.md file locally before releasing. If you haven’t added one, you will also be asked to specify an app name and description.

Release Notes and Options

For subsequent releases you can use the --notes argument to specify release notes that explain changes, like new features or bug fixes, that come with the release. These are shown to users when they update their app, as well on your app’s Discovery page under the What’s New section.

You can provide specific options when you release using the CLI (which revision to use, version tags, whether it’s listed or unlisted). Refer to the CLI reference for more info.

Releasing from the Builder UI

You can create a release for your Project using Builder. From your Builder Project, go to the Publish tab and click the New Release button.

releasing-1

The page will give you a number of options. There is a toggle which controls whether the release should be a listed on Discovery, while there is a drop down for you to select the revision to use. There is also an input field that will let you create a version tag (a version tag is auto-generated if you leave it blank).

There are three tabs that offer more options to customize your release.

Release Notes

You can enter release notes describing what’s new, when you release your app. Basic markdown syntax is supported (images and html are not supported).

The release notes are shown to everyone who installed an earlier copy of the app before they update it. They are also be displayed in the What’s New section of your app’s Discovery page.

App Info

releasing-4

You can edit the meta data of your app which will be shown on your app’s Discovery page. For listed releases on Deta Discovery, App Name and App Description are mandatory. There are a number of optional fields: Homepage, Git repository, Theme Color, Open Code, and Ported From.

These fields mostly map to fields in the Frontmatter section of the Discovery.md file.

Parameter	Discovery.md Field
App Name	app_name
App Description	tagline
Homepage	homepage
Git Repository	git
Theme Color	theme
Open Code	open_code
Ported From	ported_from

In addition to the above options, you can upload screenshots and videos to show off your app on its Discovery page. You must currently use release via the Deta CLI and a Discovery.md file to use this feature.

Discovery Page

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This section lets you compose and preview the main content section of your Discovery page using a simplified Markdown (images, HTML and H1 tags are not supported). You can use it to describe what your app does in more detail, what makes it unique, and highlight its features and functionality. The ideal description is a concise, informative paragraph followed by a short list of main features.

The description has a limit of 4250 characters and is equivalent to the main content section of the Discovery.md file.

Once you are ready, click “Launch to Space” and watch your app take off — it is now installable on Deta Space 🎉

Updates

A second core concept to publishing is Updates. If you add new features to your app after publishing it, you can publish a new release. Every user who installed the app will get a notification to update it to the latest release. Updates are opt-in by the user.

Currently, updates are only available for listed releases, but they are planned for unlisted releases.

Publish

Discovery.md File