feat: implement unified build system [WPB-8645]

[MohamadJaara]

WPB-8645 [Android] Infrastructure code and developer experience

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PR Submission Checklist for internal contributors

• The PR Title

  • conforms to the style of semantic commits messages¹ supported in Wire's Github Workflow²
  • contains a reference JIRA issue number like SQPIT-764
  • answers the question: If merged, this PR will: ... ³

• The PR Description

  • is free of optional paragraphs and you have filled the relevant parts to the best of your ability

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What's new in this PR?

Issues

the current pipeline is hard to extend or change, and a lot of the stuff are not clearly visible

Solutions

Pipeline Architecture

• Old System: Separate workflow files for each branch/environment
• New System: Unified workflow with reusable components and matrix builds

Workflow Mapping

Branch/Trigger	Old Workflow (DISABLED)	New Workflow (ACTIVE)
develop branch	build-develop-app.yml.disabled	build-develop-unified.yml
main branch	build-beta-app.yml.disabled	build-main-unified.yml
release/candidate	build-rc-app.yml.disabled	build-release-candidate-unified.yml
Release events	build-prod-app.yml.disabled	build-production-unified.yml
F-Droid builds	build-fdroid-app.yml.disabled	Integrated into build-production-unified.yml
Edge/Internal	build-edge-env.yml.disabled	Integrated into build-develop-unified.yml

Key Improvements

1. Unified Architecture

• Single base workflow: build-unified.yml handles all build logic
• Reusable components: quality-gates.yml, deploy.yml
• Consistent behavior: Same build process across all environments

2. Matrix-Based Builds

• JSON configuration: Each trigger defines build matrix in JSON format
• Flexible combinations: Flavor, variant, keystore, and deployment targets
• Easy expansion: Add new build configurations without duplicating code

3. Enhanced Deployment

• Multi-target deployment: S3, Google Play, GitHub Releases in single workflow
• Automated internal testing: internal edge deployment is not automated for each push into develop

Build Configuration Examples

Develop Branch (Validation)

[
  {
    "flavor": "Dev",
    "variant": "Debug", 
    "keystore-type": "debug",
    "build-type": "apk",
    "generate-version-file": false,
    "deployment-targets": "[{\"type\": \"s3\"}]"
  },
  {
    "flavor": "Staging",
    "variant": "Compat",
    "keystore-type": "internal", 
    "build-type": "apk",
    "generate-version-file": false,
    "deployment-targets": "[{\"type\": \"s3\"}]"
  }
]

Production Release

[
  {
    "flavor": "Prod",
    "variant": "Compatrelease",
    "keystore-type": "public",
    "build-type": "both",
    "generate-version-file": true,
    "deployment-targets": "[{\"type\": \"s3\"}, {\"type\": \"google-play\", \"package-name\": \"com.wire\", \"track\": \"alpha\"}, {\"type\": \"github-release\", \"additional-files\": \"app/version.txt\"}]"
  }
]

Testing

Test Coverage (Optional)

• I have added automated test to this contribution

How to Test

Briefly describe how this change was tested and if applicable the exact steps taken to verify that it works as expected.

Notes (Optional)

Specify here any other facts that you think are important for this issue.

Attachments (Optional)

Attachments like images, videos, etc. (drag and drop in the text box)

---

PR Post Submission Checklist for internal contributors (Optional)

• Wire's Github Workflow has automatically linked the PR to a JIRA issue

---

PR Post Merge Checklist for internal contributors

• If any soft of configuration variable was introduced by this PR, it has been added to the relevant documents and the CI jobs have been updated.

---

References

1. https://sparkbox.com/foundry/semantic_commit_messages
2. https://github.com/wireapp/.github#usage
3. E.g. feat(conversation-list): Sort conversations by most emojis in the title #SQPIT-764.

[github-actions]

Built wire-android-dev-debug-pr-4059.apk is available for download

[sonarqubecloud]

Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
0.0% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

See analysis details on SonarQube Cloud

[github-actions]

Built wire-android-dev-debug-pr-4059.apk is available for download

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR implements a unified build system for Wire Android by consolidating various branch‐specific workflows into a single, reusable, and matrix-based configuration. Key changes include:

• Introduction of unified workflows for quality gates, build, deployment, and release management.
• Consolidation of build configurations using JSON matrices for flexible, multi-target builds.
• Addition of a composite action for keystore setup to streamline signing operations.

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 8 out of 15 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
.github/workflows/quality-gates.yml	New workflow to run code analysis, UI tests, and unit tests with summary reporting.
.github/workflows/deploy.yml	Deployment workflow supporting S3, Google Play, and GitHub Releases with lowercase conversion.
.github/workflows/build-unified.yml	Unified build workflow orchestrating quality gates, environment setup, artifact generation, etc.
.github/workflows/build-release-candidate-unified.yml	Unified build workflow for release candidate branch with validation and deployment support.
.github/workflows/build-production-unified.yml	Unified build workflow for production releases including version comparison validation.
.github/workflows/build-main-unified.yml	Unified build workflow for the main branch with trigger validation.
.github/workflows/build-develop-unified.yml	Unified build workflow for the develop branch with support for internal and external deployments.
.github/actions/setup-keystore/action.yml	Composite action to decode and set up the keystore based on the specified keystore type.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

.github/workflows/deploy.yml:51

• There is an inconsistency in the naming between the input ('build-flavor') and the output variable ('build-flavour'). Please consider using consistent naming to avoid confusion.

          echo "build-flavour=$(echo '${{ inputs.build-flavor }}' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT

[Copilot]

[nitpick] The job name concatenates flavor and variant without a clear separator. Adding a delimiter (e.g., a hyphen) would improve readability.

Suggested change

	name: "Build ${{ matrix.flavor }}${{ matrix.variant }}"
	name: "Build ${{ matrix.flavor }}-${{ matrix.variant }}"

[Copilot]

[nitpick] The inline conditional for including the version file path could be made clearer by explicitly handling the true/false cases to ensure no unintended empty string values affect the artifact upload.

Suggested change

	${{ matrix.generate-version-file == true && 'app/version.txt' || '' }}
	${{ matrix.generate-version-file == true ? 'app/version.txt' : '' }}