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I am a newbie to Android development so please forgive me if I am not asking the question correctly.

Before I got into Android Development myself very recently, I managed a few Android projects with an external vendor who would publish the app from their own account.

Now the vendor's developer is gone and we need to publish version 2.0 of an app previously, developed and published by the vendor. The vendor's developer is gone and all we have is the source code (and no key, keystore etc. that is required to publish the new app as version 2.0).

We have already begun the process of transfer of ownership for the app from the Vendor's Google Play Developer account to our Google Play Developer account as described in Transfer apps to a different developer account

The above takes care of the transfer of the app ownership, but not the publishing of version 2.0 on the same app. Can someone from the community please let me know precisely what all should I be asking the vendor manager to give us (and where should he be looking for these files on the developer's machine) to enable us to publish version 2.0? (Unfortunately, the vendor manager is not too familiar with Android development).

Update: The vendor manager has reverted back with saying "***************" is the key that was used in signing. According to me, a .keystore physical file would be required and "***************" this would be just the password for accessing that .keystore. Android experts, please validate if my thought is correct.

Moiz Tankiwala
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1 Answers1

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The keystore file could be named anything, and could be anywhere on the developer's machine. In fact, it's best practice not to put it in the project folder where it might get checked into source control.

If the developer was using Eclipse and exported a signed build, Eclipse might remember the keystore file and suggest it as the default if someone begins another export.

Once you have the file, you'll need to know the keystore password, the name of the key (if there's more than one in the keystore), and the password for the key.

Kevin Krumwiede
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  • are you suggesting that there could be potentially two passwords - one for the entire Keystore and another for the key that was actually used in the signing process of my app v1.0? – Moiz Tankiwala Jun 23 '15 at 07:03
  • @MoizTankiwala Yes, there are always two passwords. It's best practice to use different passwords for the keystore and key, but many developers don't. – Kevin Krumwiede Jun 23 '15 at 07:16