Tophat: Crafting a Delightful Mobile Developer Experience - Shopify

This post details the evolution of Shopify's mobile tophatting process, introducing the desktop macOS application 'Tophat'. It highlights the challenges of testing mobile changes, especially during the React Native migration, and the limitations of previous tools. The new Tophat app integrates with CI pipelines to provide direct links to build artifacts stored in GCS, eliminating local compilation. For iOS, it addresses the lack of a direct `adb` equivalent by bundling `ios-deploy` and simplifying signing by integrating with Fastlane's `match` utility for development certificates. The 'Quick Launch' feature is also introduced for faster iteration on JavaScript changes with updated native builds.