I just made an app which, I believe would just be a test when I publish it to F-Droid. I just wonder if you have some ideas of how to publish it there, especially all the source code and build logs.
I want to hear your answers on this
F-Droid is just a front end for repositories so there are a few ways you can list an app on it - mainly by hosting your own repo or contributing to an existing one.
If you go into F-Droid -> Settings -> Repositories you can see what repos are already configured. Most major repos will have a guide for how to contribute, and this is the F-Droid official repo guide.
I went through this process for the first time recently. I opened the RFP issue, and got a response from Izzy very quickly. They were very helpful and responsive through the whole process. I was nervous it would be a slow tedious process when I started, but it turned out to be pretty quick and easy, largely thanks to Izzy’s help.
To publish on F-Droid, you need to publish the code. F-Droid complies their own binaries using their keys. They have a faq on their page on how to set it up.
You can also publish your binary and offer it to the IzzyOnDroid F-Droid repo. They’re less stingy with requirements, tho I believe the app still needs to be open source.
Or again with a binary, as long as it’s published on github/gitlab etc, people can add it via the Obtainium app, or just download it directly.
(I’m not a dev, so don’t know much more details.)
Worth noting, they support reproducible builds, which allows developers to sign with their own key:
https://f-droid.org/docs/Reproducible_Builds/
I would definitely recommend going this route if you’re starting with a new app. Having the binary on GitHub (or wherever you’d otherwise publish) match exactly the binary on F-Droid is really good for assuring people nothing in your repo was tampered with during the build process (i.e. that the binary was built from the public code, and nothing else).
It should not take extra work to do this. The project generated by Android Studio should already be reproducible. As long as you don’t change the build setup and break reproducibility yourself, it’ll “just work.” When you submit to F-Droid, just be sure to let them know you want to go the reproducible route (if you make the PR yourself, it’s a flag in the YAML file).
Ah okay that’s news for me.
You don’t need to send it, they just retrieve it from your git, they have a faq on their site. But people are saying you can package it yourself if you compile the binary according to their instructions, so I’m out of the loop anyway. Just look at their site, they ought to have the instructions.
