How Mercari Delivers Mobile App Updates Faster
Original post How We Deliver Mobile App Updates Faster
Article Summary
Manoj Kumar Gubba from Mercari's iOS team reveals how they ship mobile updates in just 3-7 days. Most teams take 1-2 weeks, but Mercari's approach cuts that in half while maintaining stability.
Mercari's XB client core team built a release pipeline that balances speed with quality for their global marketplace app. Using trunk-based development, feature flags, and automated workflows, they've created a predictable weekly release cadence that keeps features flowing to users without sacrificing stability.
Key Takeaways
- Weekly releases complete in under 2 days on average
- Trunk-based development with feature flags enables continuous merging to master
- Automated Tuesday branch cuts trigger parallel iOS and Android releases
- Features implemented Monday can reach users by Thursday
- Firebase crash monitoring and velocity alerts catch issues during phased rollouts
Mercari ships mobile updates in 3-7 days instead of the typical 1-2 weeks by combining trunk-based development, automated submissions, and phased rollouts.
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What This Article Covers
Mercari's developers needed to merge code to master continuously without breaking features that users depend on. They had to find a way to stop incomplete features from reaching production.
The team used trunk-based development and added individual feature flags for each change. This let them merge to master incrementally while keeping unfinished features off until QA validated them and they could roll out gradually.
All changes on the main branch stayed stable enough to release at any time. This eliminated long-lived feature branches that usually delayed deployments by days or weeks.
This page summarizes “How We Deliver Mobile App Updates Faster” by Mercari, published Oct 22, 2025. All credit for the original work goes to the authors.
