[FR] Offer F-Droid repo

[ghost]

Please consider setting up a [simple binary F-Droid repo](https://f-droid.org/manual/html_node/Simple-Binary-Repository.html for those not using Google Play.

APKs on GitHub is good, but this would increase ease of updating. The public transport app Transportr offers a similar option for their beta builds.

[DhammaExplorer]

F-droid support would indeed be great!

[msmollin]

Thanks for the feedback. We've had this request a few times now and are interested in the idea. However EM is on maintenance mode at the moment as our attentions are focused elsewhere lower in the stack. This might be something we'll be able to get to in Q4 of this year assuming all things go as planned.

[relan]

F-Droid maintainer here.

Since Eraser Map is free software¹, we can put it into F-Droid main repository. Are you OK with this? No work required on your side.
__
¹ Except Splunk MINT library, but it can be easily disabled at compile time.

[msmollin]

@relan my one main question would be (since I haven't looked into F-Droid in awhile) is: What is the release process for F-Droid if we release a new version of EraserMap? If there's a document or something you could point us at that would be fine.

[relan]

What is the release process for F-Droid if we release a new version of EraserMap?

A new entry should be added into F-Droid metadata. F-Droid can add those entries automatically, but not for Eraser Map because it calculates version code and name at run time:

android {
  ...
  defaultConfig {
    ...
    versionCode buildVersionCode()
    versionName version

So, in this case someone should make a merge request to add a new build entry. This is trivial, many apps are maintained this way.

If you want to use your signing key (instead of F-Droid's one) this is possible via reproducible builds.

After all, if you don't want to see Eraser Map in F-Droid main repo you can always run your own repo.

Documentation: https://f-droid.org/docs/
Feel free to ask me any questions.

[msmollin]

Gotcha. Let me discuss with the rest of the team (cc @sarahlensing ) . After reading the docs it sounds like Reproducible Builds might be the best way to go given we already have an automated process setup for signing and creating release APKs (which remove Splunk MINT as well). That way the signing keys would stay the same between F-Droid and Google Play in the event we decide to re-deploy to GP at some point in the future. At the same time I'm not sure we care that much given the only thing that's really affected is any stored data, and we only cache a few transient objects.

[relan]

Note that builds on F-Droid can have a different package ID and thus be parallel-installable with your own builds.

[relan]

0.14.1 also builds fine with F-Droid. Still waiting for your decision.

[msmollin]

Thanks for checking on that. EM is currently in maintenance mode because we haven't been able to dedicate a lot of time towards the project other than trying to keep the underlying SDKs up to date. We will likely have some resources freeing up in Q4 though so we'll keep this open and revisit it in the upcoming quarter.

[IzzySoft]

As we are in Q4 right now (well, a year later though): any news?