Image repository

[depau]

Placeholder issue to track progress on the image download repository, which is a planned feature.

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If you're good at UX design, feel free to give me some hints. I suck at it, I'm doing my best :)

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Some details for people who would like to help:

• The main plan is to add a navigation drawer on the left side to be able to reach the feature
• Some new screens with this flow:
  • Main screen shows macro-categories, such as "Ubuntu", "Arch Linux", "Fedora"
  • Tapping a category opens another screen showing the available images
• The idea is that the image should be downloaded while it's being flashed, so it can be useful on devices with low storage and good Wi-Fi
• The repository will not actually host any image; it will only contain a list of HTTPS download links; Current idea:
  • Git repo with a bunch of YAML metadata files describing each entry in the repo, served on GitHub Pages
  • A parser that reads the metadata and generates a final, big YAML
  • The parser will be run on Travis CI or similar, so that people can add/fix meta with pull requests and the repo is automatically updated at the end
  • Security considerations:
    • Should external repositories be allowed?
    • Signature checking needs to be done, like F-Droid, to prevent MITM attacks.
    • Care needs to be taken when providing download links for image, like providing multiple download links or the link to a "mirror director" so that the load on upstream's servers is balanced.

Stuff to do:

• Add the navigation drawer - @TacoTheDank's changes should make it a bit easier
• Add the required activities
• Come up with a good, future-proof structure and design for the repository
• Write server metadata generator
• Write client metadata download and parsing code
• Set up the metadata repository and add some data
• Set up GitHub Pages and a dedicated domain

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[TacoTheDank]

Current version is 1.3.31, planned is 3.0

hmmmmm where's 2.0 lol

[depau]

@TacoTheDank It's here: https://github.com/Depau/EtchDroid/milestone/1

Being able to create bootable USB drives for all OSes has a higher priority than downloading images, which you can do from the browser although it's a bit less convenient.

[TacoTheDank]

Seems about right. Windows will probably be kind of a pain because it's closed-source and more requirements.

[depau]

It's quite doable, see #5.

[TacoTheDank]

All that really matters is that it can be done lol

[depau]

I'll just throw it here but would you be interested in helping me add a navigation drawer to the main activity while I get started with #15?

That would be very helpful!

[TacoTheDank]

I would love to, but I'm still just a beginner at coding and xml stuff, and I'd rather not have to attempt to fix it 20 times over haha. I would have no clue what I'm doing :)

[depau]

Up to you :) In case just try to

• make one commit for each change, and avoid having multiple changes in one commit (hint: use Android Studio's commit dialog (Ctrl+K) and double-check the diff for each file; you can unstage changes from the diff by removing the checkmark)
• use meaningful commit messages
• avoid refactoring the whole file when you make a change (hint: on Android Studio, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L and in the dialog and set it to refactor only VCS changed text)
• avoid unnecessary/unrelated changes