Standard app release metadata format

[evant]

Describe the feature
Hi! I've started my own project to make it easier self-distribute apps https://github.com/evant/self-update and I feel like it has a lot of overlap with the goals of this project. In particular, I'm working on defining a release manifest json format that provides the information needed to install updates including apk splits. So my questions are:

1. Would it be useful to consume this manifest as well, possibly as an additional source?
2. What information would be most useful to include in the manifest?

Describe alternatives you've considered (if applicable)

• It may be possible to use existing sources in some cases, for example publishing to github releases. I'd imagine other cases, like publishing to an s3 bucket would be more difficult.
• It also may be possible to use the HTML source that's configured to read the needed information out of the json file if that's possible. (I haven't tested if pointing an HTML source to a json file actually works). This would be more work for the consumer to set up.

Additional context
Here's a link to the current documentation for the manifest format, though it's very much a work in progress.
https://github.com/evant/self-update?tab=readme-ov-file#manifest-format

[ImranR98]

I think it should be possible to use the HTML source for vary basic support (no picking between architectures etc.) as long as the JSON path property is an absolute URL.

It's a good idea, but probably too early to consider adding support for this as a proper source - I'd want to wait until the API is stable and the system has been adopted by others to some extent.

[evant]

Sounds reasonable, I do plan to have the option to include a universal apk will try to get it working with that in the meantime

[frmz]

Hi! I am an app developer (KWGT Android), i distribute my app also through my own website via APK links. A user is now asking to make my website "obtainium" compatible, i guess that it would be a lot easier if there was a JSON format i could use rather than reverse engineering your HTML parser to make the download page "readable". So i am subscribing to this page hoping there will be eventually a machine readable format i could use to make my downloads easily available to it.

[evant]

Can confirm that the html source works. Will just document what the settings should be for now.