Visual Studio 2013 update 4 cordova, how to export Android apk file to publish in PlayStore
Usually i develop the native android apps in eclipse ADT, and now i trying the new Visual Studio cordova plugin (update 4), but i didnt find the way to export and sign the APK file - like in eclipse (Export Android Applicatoin), maybe somebody can write here the step by step proccess to export and sign the apk file using Visual Studio 2013.
Thank you, Dima.
Answer
You need to do following to create, sign and publish the apk to Google Play or any other Android store.
1.) Create the apk, apk is created when project is build. Build the package in Release configuration (recommended) or you can also build debug version of apk. apk is built when target is either emulator or device. apk location is bin\Android\Release or bin\Android\Debug
2.) Create keystore and Sign the apk --
a.) You can use signtool to create Keystore, run the command on cmd (command prompt) like keytool -genkey -v -keystore my-release-key.keystore -alias alias_name -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000 More detail on this can be found here
b.) Open the res\native\android\ant.properties file, and enter information about the keystore and the alias. More detail here
3.) Build the project
4.) Publish the apk to Android store. More detail on publishing app to Google Play can be found here.