F-Droid back-end spec?

1

Hello,

Is there an F-Droid back-end specification document, that could be used to create a server that would be compatible with all F-Droid clients ?

Thanks

2

Try to start with: Setup an F-Droid App Repo | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

An read one of many from here: Artikel - IzzyOnDroid :wink:

1 Like
3

Thanks, but what I meant is, I want to actually code my own server implementation, so I would like to know the specs, e.g. endpoints, etc.

4

It’s just a web server that serves files from a certain folder structure, no enpoints, this is not REST API :slight_smile:

F-Droid / fdroidserver · GitLab help maybe?

5

I can’t seem to find information in this repo regarding that folder structure. Thanks

6

Read https://android.izzysoft.de/articles/named/fdroid-simple-binary-repo

and https://android.izzysoft.de/articles/named/fdroid-simple-binary-repo-2

7

What do you think the server does exactly? Which part of it? The building of apps? The hosting of repo?

8

Well, I thought that app details would be stored in a database, that search would be server-side, that client update would involve server-side diffing, etc.
I also thought that maintainers would have administrative endpoints to create/update/delete apps.

(This is not a criticism) now I understand why clients are slow, because of the server-side being static.

Thanks

9

No, for privacy, everything the client does is on-device only.

The repo storage is just a dumb static page with packages.

Slow or not that depends on actions, slow downloading depends on server/network, app search/installs depends on device, ect

10

Static assets are best suit for catching. See the arguments of headless CMS

11

Yes, but client updating would be much faster if the back-end would only return changed items since last time (i.e. server-side diffing).

12

This will be supported in the index-v2.

13

Also, the database is just several megabytes. It’s not theb bottleneck. To my understanding the really slow part is APK downloading and website loading.

14

I can generate the index-v1.json file and its contents, but how to put it inside a jar and generate the META-INF directory and its contents ?
Thanks

15

You can check this file. It just put the index file into a zip file with .jar suffix. Then sign it with apksigner.

16

Are there example values for config ? Thanks

17
18

In index-v1.json :

  • How do repo.version & packages[][].versionCode integers work ?
  • What are requests.install & requests.uninstall arrays ?

Thanks

19

repo.version is a static value. fdroidserver/index.py · master · F-Droid / fdroidserver · GitLab

packages[][].versionCode is the app version code.

What are requests.install & requests.uninstall arrays ?

They are used to push install/uninstall command from the repo. I don’t know how they work but I thought they are not used in the main repo.

20

repo.version is a static value.

When should it be changed and how should it be generated ?

packages[][].versionCode is the app version code.

How to generate such value from a major.minor.patch version ?

They are used to push install/uninstall command from the repo.

Do you mean clients will automatically install or uninstall apps from those values ?