How We Deliver Mobile App Updates Faster
Article Summary
Manoj Kumar Gubba from Mercari's iOS team shares how they cut mobile release cycles from weeks to just 3-7 days. Their secret? A combination of trunk-based development and aggressive automation that most teams overlook.
Mercari's XB client core team built a release pipeline that gets features to users in under a week while maintaining stability. This deep dive covers their weekly release cadence, automated workflows, and how they balance speed with quality for their global marketplace app.
Key Takeaways
- Weekly releases complete in under 2 days using automated GitHub Actions workflows
- Trunk-based development with feature flags enables continuous merging without breaking production
- iOS submits to Apple before QA completes, saving critical review time
- Phased rollouts with Firebase crash monitoring and Slack alerts catch issues early
- Features implemented Monday can reach users by Thursday, not weeks later
By combining trunk-based development, feature flags, and parallel review submissions, Mercari delivers mobile updates in 3-7 days instead of the typical 1-2 weeks.
About This Article
Mercari's developers kept running into a problem. When they merged code to master, they risked breaking things or shipping unstable features to users.
They switched to trunk-based development and added individual feature flags for each change. This let them merge to master incrementally while keeping unfinished work hidden from users.
Now every change on the main branch stays stable. The team can release whenever they want without stress, and they cut their app release cycle from 1-2 weeks down to 3-7 working days.
