Hey Aditya,
Thanks for volunteering! Happy to help you get up to speed on F-Droid development. The best way to chat with F-Droid dev like me is via our IRC room: irc://irc.freenode.net/fdroid (I'm _hc there), asking in issue reports is also good. Email and https://f-droid.org/forums are other options. If you want help push the possibilities of developing Android apps using 100% free software, you could also use the Android-SDK and Tools packages in Debian, they are currently only available in Debian/testing: https://wiki.debian.org/AndroidTools In Debian/testing, you just do `apt-get install android-sdk`. .hc Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli: > On Wed, 10 Aug 2016 13:16:46 -0400 > Aditya Bharadwaj <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hey Denis, > Hi, > > I'm really sorry for being late to respond. > >> In response to your blog post regarding Replicant 6.0 early work, I'd >> like to contribute to Android Application based areas as I'm an >> Android Developer. > Thanks a lot! > >> Please point me to how I can get started, I've already made an >> account on redmine with user name: aditya > > Building f-droid client: > ------------------------ > The first thing to do would be to compile the f-droid client. > Its source code is at https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient.git > > According to their README, they expect users to build it this way: > ./gradlew assembleRelease > > Not being familiar with Android applications development[1], I don't > know if that's the only step required, or what it would do behind the > scenes. > More specifically I don't know if you are required to have an SDK > installed and which ones are supposed to work[2]. > > Specifications and source code: > ------------------------------- > The FSDG guidelines[3] requires Replicant not to promote non-free > software. Practically speaking we ship f-droid which has in its > repositories software that do. > A good example is the Firefox application which, in its add-on manager, > has non-free software. > > Practically speaking the apks from the official f-droid repository are > built from package definition that comes from fdroiddata[4]. > In the case of applications such as Firefox, the package definition > contains some anti-feature tag: >> AntiFeatures:NonFreeAdd,Tracking,UpstreamNonFree > > Suggested fix: > -------------- > F-droid already has: > - a way to get such data since it will warn the user about such > anti-features by displaying them in red in the f-droid client. > - a way to filter out applications: in f-droid settings we have a > section called "APPLICATION COMPATIBILITY", where the user can ask > f-droid to allow installing incompatible versions or not. > However, here, such applications are still displayed. > > The idea is to: > - make F-droid detect Replicant > - Add a way to totally hide applications. > - Make f-droid hide all applications with anti-features, if running on > Replicant. > Hiding all the applications with an anti-feature is sufficient, even > if ideally we could only hide the anti-features conflicting with the > FSDG[3] guidelines. > Having a more fine grained filter could be implemented later, as > right now meeting the FSDG again is Replicant's top priority. > > Fix rationale: > -------------- > The goal is to have a long term solution that require the least > possible additional maintenance from Replicant community or > developers. > Once the fix is in f-droid, if a non-FSDG compliant application shows > up in f-droid when using Replicant, all Replicant community or > developers would have to do would be to send a patch to add an > anti-feature tag to fdroiddata. > This would be really straightforward and fast. > > Contacts: > --------- > The f-droid bugreport[5] is a good place to ask f-droid specific > question on the fix implementation. > The Replicant mailing list is also a good place to discuss it. > > References: > ----------- > [1]I only wrote one tiny useless Android application with Replicant 4.2 > SDK. That SDK uses Apache ant instead of gradle. > [2]The last release of Replicant is the 4.2 version, however Wolfgang > is working on porting Replicant to Android 6.0, and knows more about > more recent Replicant SDK. > [3]https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html > [4]https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata.git > [5]https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/issues/564 > > Thanks again for your interest. > > Denis. > -- PGP fingerprint: EE66 20C7 136B 0D2C 456C 0A4D E9E2 8DEA 00AA 5556 https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0xE9E28DEA00AA5556 _______________________________________________ Replicant mailing list [email protected] https://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/replicant
