Seeking a way to make app building process more user-friendly. Ideally, a user just clicks the “build” button and after a while they’re prompted to install. Building takes place on the end device - not on servers, not on PC, not in Termux.
Why such a “F-Droid builder” would be desired?
First of all, despite Android being user-friendly OS, building apps is certainly not a user-friendly process. When setting up the environment, especially if one prefers not to run Android Studio, the Internet lacks good tutorials, Android SDK/sdkmanager have that weird license accepting system and Gradle doesn’t like to cooperate. Personalyl I’ve been trying to set it up to build even simpliest apk so many times and failed. Building on Android is even harder.
Second, there aren’t always ready-to-download apk files in the git repo - sometimes it’s expected to build it oneself. It’s also useful when a user need to test a bleeding edge commit.
Third, trust and self-control. Producing verifiable builds without development skills and the ability to modify the app, from trivial things like colors or permissions, through cloning and automated patching to fixing bugs on your own.
I believe that would be very beneficial to the FOSS community (i.e. lowering entry level for contributors), but, to my surprise, nobody has ever attempted.