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Read more about the article Publish an Open Source app on Fdroid

Publish an Open Source app on Fdroid

Fdroid is a famous software repository hosted with numerous free and open source Android apps. They have a main repository where they allow developers hosting free and ad free software after a thorough check up on the app. This blog will tell you how to get your project hosted in their repository using steps I followed to publish the PSLab Android app. Before you get started, make sure you have the consent from your developer community to publish their app on Fdroid. Fdroid requires your app to use all kind of open resources to implement features. If there is any closed source libraries in your app and you still want to publish it on Fdroid, you may have to reimplement that feature by any other mean without using closed source resources. They will also not allow to have Google’s proprietary “play-services” in your app along with proprietary ad services. You can find the complete inclusion policy document from their official page. When your app is fully ready, you can get started with the inclusion procedure. Unlike how we are publishing apps on Google Play, publishing an app on Fdroid is as simple as sending a pull request to their main repository. That’s exactly what we have to do. In simple terms all we have to do is: Fork the Fdroid main data repository Make changes to their files to include our app Do a pull request First of all you need a GitLab account as the Fdroid repository is hosted in GitLab. Once you are ready with a GitLab account, fork and clone the f-droid-data repository. The next step is to install the fdroid-server. This can be simply done using apt: $ sudo apt install fdroidserver Once that is done, go into the directory where you cloned the repository and run the following command to read current meta data where it saves all the information related to existing apps on Fdroid; $ fdroid readmeta This will list out various details about the current meta files. Next step is to add our app details into this meta file. This can be done easily using following command or you can manually create folders and files. But the following is safer; $ fdroid import --url https://github.com/fossasia/pslab-android --subdir app Replace the link to repository from the --url tag in the above command. For instance the following will be the link for fossasia-phimpme android; $ fdroid import --url https://github.com/fossasia/phimpme-android --subdir app This will create a file named as “org.fossasia.pslab” in the metadata directory. Open up this text file and we have to fill in our details. Categories License Web Site Summary Description Description needs to be terminated with a newline and a dot to avoid build failures. Once the file is filled up, run the following command to make sure that the metadata file is complete. $ fdroid readmeta Then run the following command to clean up the file $ fdroid rewritemeta org.fossasia.pslab We can automatically add version details using the following command: $ fdroid…

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Read more about the article Enabling Google App Signing for Android Project

Enabling Google App Signing for Android Project

Signing key management of Android Apps is a hectic procedure and can grow out of hand rather quickly for large organizations with several independent projects. We, at FOSSASIA also had to face similar difficulties in management of individual keys by project maintainers and wanted to gather all these Android Projects under singular key management platform: Phimp.me Pocket Science Lab loklak wok Open Event Android and sample apps eventyay Organizer App Ask SUSI.AI To handle the complexities and security aspect of the process, this year Google announced App Signing optional program where Google takes your existing key’s encrypted file and stores it on their servers and asks you to create a new upload key which will be used to sign further updates of the app. It takes the certificates of your new upload key and maps it to the managed private key. Now, whenever there is a new upload of the app, it’s signing certificate is matched with the upload key certificate and after verification, the app is signed by the original private key on the server itself and delivered to the user. The advantage comes where you lose your key, its password or it is compromised. Before App Signing program, if your key got lost, you had to launch your app under a new package name, losing your existing user base. With Google managing your key, if you lose your upload key, then the account owner can request Google to reassign a new upload key as the private key is secure on their servers. There is no difference in the delivered app from the previous one as it is still finally signed by the original private key as it was before, except that Google also optimizes the app by splitting it into multiple APKs according to hardware, demographic and other factors, resulting in a much smaller app! This blog will take you through the steps in how to enable the program for existing and new apps. A bit of a warning though, for security reasons, opting in the program is permanent and once you do it, it is not possible to back out, so think it through before committing. For existing apps: First you need to go to the particular app’s detail section and then into Release Management > App Releases. There you would see the Get Started button for App Signing. The account owner must first agree to its terms and conditions and once it's done, a page like this will be presented with information about app signing infrastructure at top. So, as per the instructions, download the PEPK jar file to encrypt your private key. For this process, you need to have your existing private key and its alias and password. It is fine if you don’t know the key password but store password is needed to generate the encrypted file. Then execute this command in the terminal as written in Step 2 of your Play console: java -jar pepk.jar --keystore={{keystore_path}} --alias={{alias}} --output={{encrypted_file_output_path}} --encryptionkey=eb10fe8f7c7c9df715022017b00c6471f8ba8170b13049a11e6c09ffe3056a104a3bbe4ac5a955f4ba4fe93fc8cef27558a3eb9d2a529a2092761fb833b656cd48b9de6a You will have to…

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Read more about the article Preparing for Automatic Publishing of Android Apps in Play Store

Preparing for Automatic Publishing of Android Apps in Play Store

I spent this week searching through libraries and services which provide a way to publish built apks directly through API so that the repositories for Android apps can trigger publishing automatically after each push on master branch. The projects to be auto-deployed are: Open Event Orga App Open Event Android PSLab Android Loklak Wok Android Phimpe Android SUSI Android I had eyes on fastlane for a couple of months and it came out to be the best solution for the task. The tool not only allows publishing of APK files, but also Play Store listings, screenshots, and changelogs. And that is only a subset of its capabilities bundled in a subservice supply. There is a process before getting started to use this service, which I will go through step by step in this blog. The process is also outlined in the README of the supply project. Enabling API Access The first step in the process is to enable API access in your Play Store Developer account if you haven’t done so. For that, you have to open the Play Dev Console and go to Settings > Developer Account > API access. If this is the first time you are opening it, you’ll be presented with a confirmation dialog detailing about the ramifications of the action and if you agree to do so. Read carefully about the terms and click accept if you agree with them. Once you do, you’ll be presented with a setting panel like this: Creating Service Account As you can see there is no registered service account here and we need to create one. So, click on CREATE SERVICE ACCOUNT button and this dialog will pop up giving you the instructions on how to do so: So, open the highlighted link in the new tab and Google API Console will open up, which will look something like this: Click on Create Service Account and fill in these details: Account Name: Any name you want Role: Project > Service Account Actor And then, select Furnish a new private key and select JSON. Click CREATE. A new JSON key will be created and downloaded on your device. Keep this secret as anyone with access to it can at least change play store listings of your apps if not upload new apps in place of existing ones (as they are protected by signing keys). Granting Access Now return to the Play Console tab (we were there in Figure 2 at the start of Creating Service Account), and click done as you have created the Service Account now. And you should see the created service account listed like this: Now click on grant access, choose Release Manager from Role dropdown, and select these PERMISSIONS: Of course you don’t want the fastlane API to access financial data or manage orders. Other than that it is up to you on what to allow or disallow. Same choice with expiry date as we have left it to never expire. Click on ADD USER and…

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