F-Droid and bootctl

[licaon-kter]

I'd like to add MagiskManager to F-Droid, and it builds fine and dandy.

The F-Droid policy is to have everything FOSS and built from source, but I see that bootctl is a binary.

Is this binary build from https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/extras/+/master/bootctl or taken from somewhere else?

While being licensed under Apache 2.0 (if the repo above is the source) makes it compatible with a GPL3 app ( I'm no lawyer, I just read https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html ), we kinda need to build it from sources to be able to include it.

So two questions:

• could this be build standalone without the need to build the whole AOSP?
• if not, could this be separated like SafetyNet part was?

Thanks

Ref: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/merge_requests/4401/diffs

[topjohnwu]

@licaon-kter it doesn't seem easy or even possible to separate it from AOSP tree since it is deep into the whole HIDL stuff. Can I host it somewhere on a server, and download when I need it?

[licaon-kter]

How much is that needed? From what I parsed it's used in Pie for the A/B stuff or maybe I've misread...

Is it easy to move it (the coding part) to download as needed?

[topjohnwu]

Yes it is, I think I'll just go that route :)

[DenyDarko]

Just a personal opinion here.

Can't see why a magisk core function (most modern devices are A/B, thus the "core" term) controlling boot should be separated from the code for it to be included in f-droid. It's not an optional check/function like safetynet but a very important part of it.

Magisk has it's own update process and everything.

Does it even worth it?

IMHO if F-Droid wants Magisk, they should consider a reasonable exception, not the other way around.

Again that's just a free time personal comment.

[licaon-kter]

@DenyDarko F-Droid can't guarantee "we build this from source" if they keep adding exceptions, everyone feels special and want some sort of exception for their own app.

You can keep using the internal updater (@topjonwu which will need to be disabled when it's installed from F-Droid BTW) while I'll choose the F-Droid build.

[DenyDarko]

@licaon-kter it's just my personal opinion, how I feel about it, I don't have decision power here. Don't take me wrong xD

BTW, Magisk IS special, very very special. As special as it can get.
It's the only Superuser method in active development for almost the whole Android community.

[Iey4iej3]

Add a reference: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/issues/283