Best Practices to Deploy MDK Application in Cloud Foundry

[Angelo_Ab]

Hi,

I need an help to understand the best practice to deploy MDK Application in Cloud Foundry. (CI/CD Pipelines whould be the best way but needs to be investigated using sap/mdk-tools, I do not found any guide at the moment)

We have 3 Cloud Foundry Environment on the relatives 3 BTP SubAccounts: Development, Quality, Production.

In manual way, from BAS after selecting the Cloud Foundry environment where the App needs to be deployed, we simply use the Application -> MDK Deploy 

Then, after the deploy of the Dev Project in the Dev CF I found all the Instances of the App under "Services -> Instances".

Otherwise, when I first deployed the Dev Project in the Quality CF i can't see any Instances under "Services -> Instances" of the app but the Quality App works well.

Then, If I made a new deploy of Dev Project in Dev CF, the Dev app ask for Update and at same way if I made a new deploy of Dev Project in Quality CF, the Quality app ask for Updates. Like expected.

Now, I configured the Production Environment in Sap Mobile Service, I builded the APK with Mobile Cloud Build and I run the APK without run the deploy of the Dev Project in the Production CF. 

I expected the app not to works, but it does. What I'm missing ?

Thank you.

[bill_froelich]

When you refer to deploying the app are you deploying to Mobile Services (iOS and Android) or are you deploying to Cloud Foundry (MDK Web Client) or both?

[Angelo_Ab]

@bill_froelichthe use of the App is only on Android and not in the Web Version then I deploy in Mobile Service. (I also deployed at the beginning in Cloud Foundry for test app purpose).

When I deploy the app in Mobile Service, BAS ask me to log into Cloud Foundry and select a Space.

[bill_froelich · Accepted solution]

When you deploy to Mobile Services from BAS you first must login to CF and select the destination org and space corresponding to the Mobile Services Application where you want the metadata deployed to.  The deploy process will bundle up the metadata and send it to App Update under the specified mobile application.  You can go into the Mobile Services cockpit and select Mobile App Update to see the deployed version.

The Deploy process will also create the uploadBundle.zip in the .build directory under your application in BAS.  This is the bundled metadata that was automatically uploaded to App Update. You can also download this file and manually upload to App Update in the same or other instances (QA, Prod).

Deploy will not create a new instance in BTP of the mobile app.  You would need to either manually create the app in other environments (QA, Prod) or export the app from the Mobile Services cockpit and import to the other environments and make any necessary changes for the destinations etc. after importing.

In terms of your app working in Prod without deploying metadata to Prod it will depend on how the app was created in Prod as well as if your branded APK included branded metadata or not.

[bill_froelich · Accepted solution]

You can also use the mdk-tools CLI to deploy to the various environments as well

[Angelo_Ab · Accepted solution]

Thank you Bill. Now it's all clear. I simply export/import the app from quality to production adjusting the destinations. I mistakenly thought that the Deploy to Mobile Service, by selecting the Cloud Foundry organization, would generate objects in the Cloud Foundry itself, but instead everything happens in the Mobile Service. The objects I saw in CF definitely belong to the Web App Deploy.