How to maintain and deploy a poc (Proof Of Concept) version of an app?

Question

In our organization we sometimes have to create a poc (proof of concept) to either validate or invalidate the way to go. Currently we're having a discussion around how to embed this within our development/testing process in the app and thus the same repo itself. It would be nice that the poc can enter the internal testing / testflight mode on android playstore and iOS appstores.. The timeline of a poc can be as less as a day to the span of multiple weeks whereas the latter can disrupt our deployment process.

A few possible methods raised by the team were:

• Creating a long-lived branch in git and deploying it to internal testing/testflight
  • this disrupts our development process in where we deploy to internal testing / testflight as soon as a 'feature' is done. A feature is defined to be able to be done within a sprint and thus 'short-lived' branches.
• Creating a long-lived branch in git, change settings to create the app with a different name, upload as app (poc-testing) and only deploy to internal testing / testflight making the app not available for the public.
  • A downside to this is everytime we make a poc we'll have to make a new application and so on.
• Don't deploy the app at all to internal testing / testflight and manually distribute the apk/bundle to the people and/or inform them of a place where and how to download/install it.
  • A downside to this is it's all manually (the installation part). We do have a pipeline which builds the app into the desired formats for iOS and Android.
• Create a complete new application (and repo) solely for the purpose of the poc.
  • This has as a downside that you don't have access to the app's code. This can also be an upside.

The requirements we have are:

1. Easy to maintain
2. Our testers know exactly what they're testing (the poc or new features)
3. It doesn't block our app from deploying to the internal testing / testflight when a feature is done.
4. It'd be nice if the poc is available within internal testing / testflight so it gets spread automatically

What is the way to go for this?

• Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen: Separate the building from the deployment, and make the deployment accept both.
• Baklap4: Can you elaborate 'and make the deployment accept both.'? This can only be done if it's not the same 'name', so method #2 in my question i think?