As of today there is a new official publishing API That allows you to upload to any channel (ie. alpha, beta...) or update title and description and more.
From the docs:
Uploading new versions of an app Releasing apps, by assigning APKs to various Tracks (alpha, beta, staged rollout, or production)
Creating and modifying Google Play Store listings, including
localized text and graphics and multi-device screenshots
I answered this also on this question, but I figured I'd add the same comment here. Let me know if that's the wrong way to do this (duplicating answers).
I was able to create a gradle plugin that does the publishing to any track you wish for any flavor/variant you wish using the new Google Play Publishing APIs.
I'm working on publishing this to maven central so it can be used in a build script, but for now you can grab the android-publisher subdirectory in the repo, put it in the root of your gradle build, and rename the folder to buildSrc. Use the following line in the build.gradle file for the android project you want to publish:
You can then set your publishing settings using an androidPublisher block in the build.gradle file.
android {
...
}
androidPublisher {
applicationName = "Company-Name-Product-Name/1.0"
packageName = "<package name>"
serviceAccountEmail = "<service account email>"
serviceAccountKeyFile = file('<p12 keyfile - NOT the json file>')
track = "alpha" // default, don't need to specify
variantName = "release" // default, don't need to specify
}
Make sure the service account you create has "release manager" permissions, download the p12 key file and put it in the project's directory. Then run this command:
gradle androidPublish
That will send it to Google Play using the credentials you specified. Good luck and let me know if you have questions since this is brand new.
gradle-play-publisher is a Gradle plugin to upload your APK and app details to the Google Play Store.
I simply run ./gradlew publishApkRelease from my terminal and it uploads the APK and the summary of recent changes., there are more task like this available.