I've done a bit of searching and haven't really found any information that addresses this topic thoroughly.
First, a bit of background (I'll keep it brief):
My app is making use of Azure Mobile Services to communicate with my database, provide offline sync, etc. Since offline synchronization is one of the features, I've got a local SQLite database on the app. The app is deployed and being used by end users. Now there are a bunch of changes that need to be made on the back-end (Azure side) that need to be tested by a group of users.
Ideal operating environment:
I have made a new test version of Azure Mobile Services and a test database for it to communicate with. What I'd like to do is have my app use a test SQLite database and connect to the test AMS service when it's compiled in debug mode. In release mode, it would connect to the production AMS service and either target a production local SQLite database, or truncate it on build. This would prevent me from having to have 2 different apps entirely for testing purposes. I imagine there would be versioning issues, etc. for those who are both testers and users.
I think in order to make the above work, I'd be better off with a CI server like Jenkins that can build the app and deploy it depending on whether it's compiled in debug or release mode. Would this work?
Or, is it best just to do two separate apps? I don't like the idea of this since the code is pretty much identical. I suppose in this case I could do a release branch and a development branch in my git repo, then merge them at some point...
If anyone has any experience doing this, or has any suggestions, I'm all ears!