Improving build process (mainly it's predictability)

Hi,

the most recent build run of F-Droid took almost 10 days to publish new versions.
While this does not happen that often, the unpredictability is quite annoying.

In the recent case, OpenTracks was affected by the “TargetSDK 30 signing”-issue and we quickly fixed it by downgrading to 29 (took us 1-2 days).
We received several requests regarding the availability on F-Droid of this new version, but we could not say when this would be the case.
In addition, our sales on Google Play store (2-3 sales a day vs. 0.3 before) rocketed suggesting that some people switched from F-Droid to the PlayStore version - sales increase fits nicely to the Android 11 release.

For our users, one issue is that they have no chance to update the F-Droid version from another source.
So, if we have a critical bug (like data export broken), we can release a fix and then tell the reporter “well it will be on F-Droid somewhen”.
Which is not really cool.

Long story short: what can we do to improve this situation?
So, what I need is a simple way to know:

  • when is the next build run scheduled and what all previous build server runs (only date of start and finish)
  • be able to point users to this info (and not to fdroid.org/wiki’s build process page)
    It is just not user friendly (and it loads awesomely slow; especially on my old mobile) and you cannot link directly to an application (need to click another link). Also the information shown on the detail page is meaningless to non-engineers.
  • when is the next signing be scheduled
  • when an app was build (not yet signed)
    Show this information somewhere (on the webpage); it would be great to see this on the actual application page (i.e., OpenTracks | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository )

And I would love to get a badge that I can put in the Git repo that shows, which is the most recent release on F-Droid.

Another thing that would be nice: can we publish the build progress information as RSS (per app)? Then I can just use my RSS reader and get notified if something is going on (e.g., builds for OpenTracks are starting or failing).

So, how can I help?

PS: That the signing process is air-gaped and a human needs to get stuff done is fine with me.
Let’s just make this transparent somehow.

2 Likes

@Licaon_Kter That works to get the current version, but does not help to understand what the current state is for F-Droid after we tag a new release.

Right, MRs welcomed I guess.

@Licaon_Kter Do you have suggestion were to start?

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