Just wanted to clarify when to run expo publish? Before or after a build? Does eas build automatically publish to the release channel in eas.json if it has not been published already? In some cases I have done a publish, then build, then submit, but when i run the app in testflight it crashes. But if if i re-run publish, the app works again.
you have to run expo publish manually to update. eas build embeds your app code and does not publish any updates. if your app crashes before an update there is a bug in your app code.
the other thing you mentioned re: memory errors, that is not an issue with expo, your ci server is running out of memory when publishing.