[Android] Publish app in F-Droid

[emanuelb]

F-Droid URL: https://f-droid.org/
F-Droid Wikipedia: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Droid

Contribution/Submit Applications: https://f-droid.org/en/contribute/#submit-applications
Inclusion Policy: https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Inclusion_Policy
Request For Packaging Tickets: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/issues

F-Droid is application & app store for android apps (alternative to Google Play) that accepts only FLOSS (free/libre and open-source) apps and doesn't require any account creation/login in order to download apps.

The requirements for being included into f-droid are here: https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Inclusion_Policy/

The process for getting an app published to f-droid is outlined here: https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Inclusion_How-To/ https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp#submission-queue https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

You can open a RFP (Request For Packaging) ticket here: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp or an user can do so, provided you agree to include this app in F-droid (a comment to this issue is enough for it)

Some users don't have play-store on their devices as they are degoogled devices or don't create/use google account (using aurora store app https://auroraoss.com/ in anonymous mode (which is available on f-droid) is solution to still get apps from google-play) or using OS/custom ROMs that don't have it included, such as: (Some bundle f-droid by default)

https://grapheneos.org/ GrapheneOS
https://calyxos.org/ CalyxOS
https://lineageos.org/ LineageOS
https://lineage.microg.org/ LineageOS for microG
https://e.foundation/ /e/
https://www.replicant.us/ Replicant

Downloading APKs from official places like github releases https://github.com/hsjoberg/blixt-wallet/releases or website, or from unofficial sources like APK downloading sites https://apk.support or https://apkpure.com/ etc... will avoid the play-store/google dependency but it's lack automatic update mechanism unless it's built in into the application, F-Droid solve this.

Once the app is published into f-droid add the below image code into
README.md to show that the app available on f-droid:

[<img src="https://fdroid.gitlab.io/artwork/badge/get-it-on.png" alt="Get it on F-Droid" height="80">](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid/)

[hsjoberg]

Thank you for opening this issue @emanuelb.
I fully agree on getting Blixt Wallet up on F-Droid. This something I have attempted several times before, but ran into issues I wasn't able to solve.

The primary issue I have is getting the lnd gomobile binary (.aar) to work with their build system.

If you are experienced F-Droid, I would appreciate any help, support or suggestions.
I suppose I could do an RFP, but it seems more appropriate to figure out things ourselves.

Also, I am currently occupied with taproot.watch, taking most of my free time (as you might can imagine. 🙂), but I hope to continue on the reproducibility work soon.

[emanuelb]

My suggestion is to open RFP, the people from f-droid may provide needed support/guidance, it's might be better to do it after fixing issue #319 regarding writing script to build .aar file, after such script exists it's easier to port it for f-droid-build-server environment.

The process for F-Droid inclusion contain more steps then just the yaml file to build the app, like adding fastlane structure see: https://gitlab.com/snippets/1895688 and passing the review that happen in RFP process (some automatic checks by fdroid-scanner + human review that app is in compliance)

Reproducible builds enable publishing the app on F-Droid with your/vendor signature (as opposite to them signing apps which are not reproducible)