Release APKs and app store delivery

[Ben Cooksley]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 7:29 PM Volker Krause <vkrause at kde.org> wrote:

> On Wednesday, 28 April 2021 02:20:51 CEST Aleix Pol wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 24, 2021 at 10:17 AM Volker Krause <vkrause at kde.org> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > with the Craft-based Android release package builds hopefully being
> close
> > > to working, here are some thoughts on the next steps of getting those
> > > packages into the corresponding app stores/repositories, and a few
> points
> > > I would need help with.
> > >
> > > (1) Signing
> > > This should mostly be a copy/paste job from the existing setup for the
> > > nightly builds.
> > >
> > > (2) F-Droid Release Repository
> > > On the Jenkins side this should also be mostly a copy/paste job, the
> > > nightly build script for this will only need minor adjustments to be
> less
> > > aggressive for expiring old packages.
> > >
> > > We however would need to set up a new repository for release packages,
> > > next to the one with the nightly builds. Ideally with a long-time
> stable
> > > URL so we can maybe convince the F-Droid people to include that by
> > > default as an external source (even if that means disabled by default
> as
> > > per their policy, still better than not being available at all). That's
> > > probably something that would need sysadmin help.
> > >
> > > (3) Google Play
> > > I would like to evaluate using fastlane supply
> > > (https://docs.fastlane.tools/ actions/supply/) for automatically
> > > uploading metadata and APKs to Google Play. That doesn't necessarily
> > > imply publishing APKs blindly, but being able to automatically have
> APKs
> > > in the staging area as well as automatically syncing translations for
> the
> > > app description seems very much worth it to me. And given that fastlane
> > > actually defined the metadata format that F-Droid is using I have high
> > > hopes that this integrates well with what we already have.
> > >
> > > However, fastlane seems to be mainly distributed via Ruby's package
> > > manager, not via regular distro packages. Is that a blocker for
> > > installing this on the signing machine?
> > >
> > > For testing, I'd also need an API access key for our Google Play
> account,
> > > as described in the above link. I think that's something Aleix has to
> set
> > > up, I don't have permissions for that.
> > >
> > > This then presumably also needs a small driver script like we have for
> > > F-Droid to upload new packages and metadata after signing.
> > >
> > > Makes sense?
> >
> > The apks we generate now are already signed and can be just uploaded
> > to F-Droid repos (our nightly repo being proof) and Google Play as is.
> > So it's already done, unless you want to deviate from it in any way,
> > but now it should work.
>
> For the release builds signing is still missing, but that is just one
> small MR
> away I think: https://invent.kde.org/sysadmin/binary-factory-tooling/-/
> merge_requests/173
> <https://invent.kde.org/sysadmin/binary-factory-tooling/-/merge_requests/173>


Oops, apologies for missing your fix there - i've had quite a bit of email
lately.
That has now been merged in and deployed to the Binary Factory.


>
>
> > Regarding the usage of fastlane, we already support their format so
> > yay. I don't know though how much we can extrapolate our generation
> > through appstream. We might need ad-hoc solutions in some cases.
>
> The existing generator already allows for manual overrides by preferring
> existing fastlane metadata in the source dir over generating it from
> appstream. That's e.g. how we get Itinerary's store header image in there,
> or
> KTrip's Android specific screenshots. Ultimately you can entirely replace
> that
> mechanism when needed, binary factory just wants fastlane metadata as part
> of
> the build results, how it gets there doesn't matter.
>
> > In any case, big thumbs up, would be happy to help if there's anything
> > I can help with.
>
> You can indeed help :) Please go through the setup instructions for Google
> Play API access (https://docs.fastlane.tools/actions/supply/#setup) and
> send
> me the resulting key, so I can test the fastlane integration. My access
> rights
> aren't sufficient to do this myself.
>
> Thank you,
> Volker


Regards,
Ben
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-android/attachments/20210428/2e44ddd5/attachment-0001.htm>