Developing Apps with a privacy friendly Developer Set-up

I have blocked connections to Google all across my firewall for privacy reasons.
Now, I would like to start coding an open source android app with no tracking etc. involved.
But I would like to do that programming as privacy friendly as possible as well - therefore I need a privacy friendly set-up but it seems like that there is no real solution around or at least no one has ever done some research on it.

I am using Linux and don’t want to get the necessary libraries from Google.com and I also don’t want that my IDE establishes a connection to it.

My tests so far:

  • Getting Linux BBQ as it’s considered the developer edition and has a pre-installed Android Studio on it - connection to get the libraries is required…
  • Looking for an IDE with built-in support (just came across IntellJ and Eclipse but both also need a plugin which is only available at Google)…
  • Also saw that there is a command-line-tool for converting java code to .apk but again it seems like it’s only available at Google incl. giving them access to my command line…

Right now I am out of solutions.

Maybe someone here can help out? As a lot of IDEs and Projects are Open Source there must be some workaround for it.

Thanks in advance.

1 Like

Faced same problematic, so F-Droid is the right dedicated place. Due to sdk/ndk constant evolution, you’d better stand on Debian with F-Droid tools: Build Server Setup | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

Basically fdroid process relies on python (and curl), but I wasn’t seduced by vagrant & virtualbox (slowness & complexity).
Conversely using QubeOS on an usb ssd disk gave me the right tool : fast with disposable fdroid(debian) template plus all other benefits of QubesOS, without the need of vagrant & virtualbox.

I also believed there are a lot of potential Windows devs which doesn’t want to break their PC setup and could be pleased with a stand-alone usb QubesOS.

Unfortunately I upgraded my processor and my usb QubesOS doesn’t boot anymore (once broken, there is no way to recover QubesOS)… I may give another try soon or later, but the usb QubesOS installation was very tricky (mbr?, legacy?..)

Faced same problematic, so F-Droid is the right dedicated place.
Great. Thanks.

Not sure if we are talking about the same thing. I don’t have an apk, yet. I guess the Debian + F-Droid Set-up is if I already have a workin apk, right?

I am looking for an IDE + libraries (Google) for creating an apk without visiting or downloading from Google-Sources at all.

Use Tor, but until now most of the tooling comes from Google.

Not easy to dev apks without https://developer.android.com/reference/classes (which btw, always ends broken via Firefox…)

I am not picky with the IDE, just needs to come with all classes/libraries without me downloading it. So far I have tried IntellJ, Android Studio and Eclipse + Plugin without success.

Works for me, maybe you are blocking some JS or smth?

No, it happens when I use Class Index  |  Android Developers heavily, works fine on ungoogled chromium.

@Strawberry , no idea if Swift - Apple Developer is compatible with fdroid build ? Best IDE on Linux/Ubuntu? - Using Swift - Swift Forums
What programming language do you need ?

@ oF2pks sorry I just saw that you’ve tagged me. I need it for Java or Python.