Adding Open Event Orga App as a Product Flavor on FDroid
To release the orga app on fdroid, product flavors need to be added to the app. This means that 2 different packages need to be maintained that handle the code for fdroid and playstore separately. For eg. There are certain proprietary software that are used in the app such as Google Play services which won’t get accepted on fdroid. Hence alternatives need to be found out and separate code has to be maintained.
Steps:
- Go to the build.gradle file where in the Android section add the following line of code in the groovy language. We specify the flavorDimension to be default and then add the productFlavor tag. Inside this tag there will be 2 more sub tags namely fdroid and playStore. These are the 2 different flavors we will be maintaining in the app. Because of this command, 4 different build variants will be created namely : fdroidDebug, fdroidRelease, playStoreDebug and playStoreRelease. The dimension for each is specified to be default.
| flavorDimensions “default” productFlavors { fdroid { dimension “default” } playStore { dimension “default” } } |
- Now as testCoverage is being used in the app the file name also need to be changed from debug to playStore. So firstly go to the travis.yml file and change the testDebugUnitCoverage command to testPlayStoreDebugUnitCoverage. Hence when the travis will build, the modified command will be executed rather than the old command. We could also have used testfdroidDebugUnitCoverage.Following is the code snippet from the travis.yml file.
| script: – ./gradlew build – ./gradlew testPlayStoreDebugUnitTestCoverage |
- Now command for testCoverage also needs to be changed in the config.yml. So navigate to this file and modify the command.
| – run: name: Test Coverage command: ./gradlew testPlayStoreDebugUnitTestCoverage |
- Now navigate to the update-apk.sh script where we will change the name of the output apk in case of fdroid build and playStore build. As can be seen below we have first changed the name of the json file in each build. Also the name of the folder where they get generated are changed.
| \cp -r ../app/build/outputs/apk/playStore/*/**.apk . \cp -r ../app/build/outputs/apk/fdroid/*/**.apk . \cp -r ../app/build/outputs/apk/playStore/debug/output.json playStore-debug-output.json \cp -r ../app/build/outputs/apk/playStore/release/output.json playStore-release-output.json \cp -r ../app/build/outputs/apk/fdroid/debug/output.json fdroid-debug-output.json \cp -r ../app/build/outputs/apk/fdroid/release/output.json fdroid-release-output.json |
- Also the apk names in fastlane are changed for playStore with the help of the following code.
| gem install fastlane fastlane supply –apk app-playStore-release.apk –track alpha –json_key ../scripts/fastlane.json –package_name $PACKAGE_NAME |
Resources
- Official fdroid website https://f-droid.org/en/
- Google Developer website https://developer.android.com/studio/build/build-variants