I wrote up the feature to automatically generate symlinks with a constant name
that points to the current release version. I have it on by default, with a
*config.py* option to turn it off. There is also an option to set where the
symlink name comes from which defaults to app['Name'] i.e. F-Droid.apk, but
can easily be set to app['id'], i.e. _org.fdroid.fdroid.apk_. I think the best
place for the symlinks is in the root of the repo, so like
https://f-droid.org/F-Droid.apk or https://guardianproject.info/fdroid/ChatSecure.apk
For the case of the current FDroid static link https://f-droid.org/FDroid.apk
it can just be a symlink to the generated one (https://f-droid.org/F-Droid.apk
or https://f-droid.org/org.fdroid.fdroid.apk). Right now, this feature is all
or nothing, meaning it generates symlinks for all apps in the repo, or none. I
can’t think of any problems that this might cause since its only symlinks, so
the amount of disk space is tiny. Also, I think it would be useful for having
an easy “Download this app” button on each app’s page on the “Browse” view. As
long as this button is less prominent than the “Download F-Droid” button, and
it is clear that it is better to use the FDroid app than doing direct
downloads. For the f-droid.org repo, the symlinks should probably be based on
app['id'] to prevent name conflicts.
more info here:
https://f-droid.org/forums/topic/static-urls-to-current-version-of-each-app/
This gives us flexibility in how the blocks of text can be formatted in
config.py, but also provides a more useful format for displaying since the
client can decide where to wrap the text.
To support a fully offline build/signing machine, there is the "local copy
dir". The repo is generated on the offline machine and then copied to a
local dir where a thumb drive or SD Card is mounted. Then on the online
machine, using `fdroid server update --sync-from-local-copy-dir` allows
the whole server update process to happen in a single command:
0. read config.py on online machine's repo
1. rsync from the local_copy_dir to the current dir
2. copy to serverwebroot, awsbucket, etc.
This allows a dir to be specified in config.py that `fdroid server update`
will automatically rsync the repo to. The idea is that the path would
point to an SD card on a fully offline machine that serves as the secure
repo signing machine.
This allows the SSH key used to sync with the server to be specified via
the config.py or the command line. I need it for running automated tests
and setups.
apache-libcloud enables uploading to basically any cloud storage service.
This is the first implementation that allows `fdroid server` to push a repo
up to a AWS S3 'bucket'. Supporting other cloud storage services should
mostly be a matter of finding the libcloud "Provider" and setting the
access creditials.
fixes#3137https://dev.guardianproject.info/issues/3137
Having serverwebroot optional in `fdroid server` means that it can support
multiple methods of hosting, like cloud storage services. `fdroid server`
can also then support multiple repo hosting options at the same time.
These options are needed to configure Java's keytool and jarsigner to use
a Hardware Security Module aka HSM aka smartcard. The defaults provided
are meant to make things work as easily as possible.
This also makes the file layout in git basically the same as the installed
file layout, using an examples/ dir. I'm not sure if config.buildserver.py
is an example conf file, or a conf file that is actually in use, so I did
not move it.
