Additional F-Droid repository for nightly

[JensKorte]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I have no Playstore Account and therefore I cannot get the nightly version easily. I have to download it from https://download.kiwix.org/nightly/.

Describe the solution you'd like

It would be great, if kiwix had a F-Droid repository for nightlies like repos listed in https://forum.f-droid.org/t/known-repositories/721. See also: https://f-droid.org/en/repomaker/

Describe alternatives you've considered
F-Droid themselves could have a nightly/developer repository where the beta/nightly versions of apps are listed.

Additional context
Since this is a very low priority issue this issue can be closed quite fast.

[kelson42]

Sounds doable...

[dipu989]

@kelson42 @macgills Would like to do this! Please assign.

[dipu989]

@kelson42 @macgills We need to make a Kiwix repo on Fdroid that hosts our nightly builds via Gitlab? Is the approach correct?
References - https://android.izzysoft.de/articles/named/fdroid-intro-3?lang=en

[macgills]

This is the file we have on fdroids repository that dictates what gets hosted on fdroid.

I really can't help you much as I have only ever done 1 update to that file and most of fdroid is still very confusing to me. Maybe the repomaker link in the description of this ticket is useful?

[JensKorte]

The repomaker is imho the best way. You can create your own repo on your own server and a user can add the repo adress (https://...) in F-Droid at (translated from the german F-Droid) "Options" -> "packet sources" -> "+"
You can even do this for closed source software, e.g. the german tagesschau app. There is no source available.

[kelson42]

@JensKorte @macgills Please don't mix with #1777. #1777 is not the solution for this ticket. I want Kiwix is the standard FDroid repo and this is the most important. The solution here is just to make the FDroid PR work fine (or does the option to avoid signing just fail like suggested in FDroid PR?).

[macgills]

@kelson42 this is #1777 .

I was just giving dipu the only information I have as regards fdroid. I don't know how automatic publishing will work because we certainly can't set it up for the actual releases of the app on fdroid so I would think this ticket is mildly doomed for the time being

[kelson42]

@macgills Sorry... In addition to push to download.kiwix.org we should push to this repo. (wherever he is...). So this is not about releases, this is only for nightlies.

[macgills]

The new repo doesn't work like how the fdroid repo does? We can just hit an endpoint with an apk? If so perfect, if we can't and have to do it the way fdroid do it we are stuck the same way we are for our real releases

[JensKorte]

The new repo doesn't work like how the fdroid repo does? We can just hit an endpoint with an apk? If so perfect, if we can't and have to do it the way fdroid do it we are stuck the same way we are for our real releases

I am not sure, if I get you right. In an F-Droid repo there can be different versions of a program, there is a recommended version and the user can select to up-/downgrade to an alpha or older version.
kiwix-nightly could be the package name, then it is not mixed up with kiwix. If you want to provide test versions like different branches, I would suggest to provide an extra package with a name like kiwix-<branchname>.

[macgills]

Yes but I currently don't believe we have an easy way of automatically updating this "nightly repo" as I would assume the update mechanism is similar to on the main fdroid repo which we currently cannot support because we need to supply an endpoint with version codes.

Our nightly builds are also development versions if i remember correctly, they are intended for nobody but developers.

[JensKorte]

Our nightly builds are also development versions if i remember correctly, they are intended for nobody but developers.

I am no developer, but I can help with beta testing.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be now be reviewed manually. Thank you for your contributions.