We could theoretically upload the java-mwapi jar to jcentral. Needs some investigation. I don't think they allow snapshot versions. I think it best to depend on a release version anyways when we release the app.

Do we have an idea of the theoretical user base that we would gain by putting the app on f-droid?

I don't see download numbers or statistics on the app page: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=wikipedia&fdid=org.wikipedia

https://f-droid.org/wiki/index.php?title=org.wikipedia&diff=prev&oldid=54638 makes it seem like this is all done automatically on f-droid's end...

See https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/FAQ_-_App_Developers
current version: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.wikipedia
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/blob/master/metadata/org.wikipedia.txt
owner is https://gitlab.com/u/mvdan

From the maintainer notes, it looks like the issues are:

• Use of custom Maven repo --> T105235

• Time stamp in versionName --> T105230

• "rework updatechecks". I guess this refers to the AlphaUpdate of our Alpha flavor.
  • We should mention the F-droid maintainer that we are using Gradle and Gradle flavors now. Any other flavor than alpha will not use this functionality.

A custom fdroid release apk can be built using:

$ ./gradlew -q clean assembleCustomRelease -PcustomChannel=fdroid
Output: wikipedia/build/outputs/apk/wikipedia-custom-release.apk

From mvdan's comments on IRC in mobile channel today it looks like the main blocker is the custom Maven repo. The other things are optional. We should ping him again, once the repo situation has been solved.

We've removed the one blocker T105235.

Once we publish a new stable release (and it gets tagged in Git) then the f-droid project should be able to build the apk using a command line similar to in my previous comment.

Minor update to the build instructions. The output will be now in a slightly different location since we renamed the wikipedia folder to app.

So, the instructions are:

$ ./gradlew -q clean assembleCustomRelease -PcustomChannel=fdroid
Output: app/build/outputs/apk/app-custom-release.apk

Feel free to rename it to whatever filename you want afterwards.

We've also updated the ~/.sign/signing.properties file since the last stable release. So, in the future this would need to be adjusted. See https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/230826/3/app/signing.properties.sample for the diffs and app/build.gradle for the signing code.

FYI, We've tagged a new release on Friday: r/2.0.109-r-2015-08-21

Great news: mvdan from F-droid updated the config:

[server] mvdan pushed to master: Add support for gradle properties via gradleprops - https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver/commit/06c94b
[data] mvdan pushed 2 commits to master - https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/compare/e4a841...1b450a

The fdroid app should be built tomorrow at midnight UTC. We just missed it by a couple of minutes.
https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=wikipedia&fdid=org.wikipedia

The version number will be 2.0.109-fdroid. He highly encourages us to drop the date in versionName for production and beta app builds. (T105230)

We should update the app description on https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/blob/master/metadata/org.wikipedia.txt

Never mind. Mvdan helped us out again. :)

terrific!