[Android-tools-devel] fdroidserver on plain debian report

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

Hey chrysn,

This is great, thanks for this!  Hello list, chrysn tried to build all
of the apps in F-Droid using only the Debian packages.

chrysn:
> hi,
> 
> some assorted observations from getting things on:
> 
> * fdroidserver should probably recommend android-sdk now that it exists;
>   git-svn should be added too. python-gpg (or python3-gpg?) is also a
>   build dependency of some (projectmaxs) packages. is svn actually still
>   needed? (it seems that git-svn is used instead)

Makes sense for fdroidserver to suggest or recommend android-sdk.  I
don't think fdroidserver should deal with specific app dependencies
(e.g. projectmaxs), only the common basics.

> * com.afollestad.cabinet, com.as.anagramsolver and others want user
>   input for `git clone`. setting GIT_ASKPASS=true made them at least
>   fail instead of hanging indefinitely. 

GIT_ASKPASS=true is a great tip for adding to the fdroid build tools
somehow.
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver/issues/240


>   dereferencing their github urls showed that these projects have gone
>   404 in the meantime.
> 
>   were upstream repositories clean (ha! distributions would be so much
>   easier), fdroid could mirror upstream repos as debian does with
>   .orig.tar.gz, but due to checked-in whatevers, du -sch `**/.git`
>   amounts to 34gb, with no single big offenders.

Every app built by f-droid.org also then includes a source tarball, so
those are available.  At this point, I'm not too worried about building
apps with missing source, since there are much bigger fish to try.


> * at least for me in the situation of not yet having seen ano obviously
>   functional build, it's hard to tell which packages worked (or whether
>   any worked at all), because lots of .apk are around in build/ (eg
>   ./build/de.dotwee.micropinner/archive/release_v1.1.apk) which are just
>   checked-in upstream builds (philistines!), and because many (1463 of
>   1776) build scripts returned successfully even though they gave "BUILD
>   FAILED" or similar responses. (not sure how much fdroid can do about
>   that; possibly it's upstream scripts misbehaving).

Yeah, we need to improve the CLI error reporting.  The full fdroid build
process has mostly just been used for f-droid, where the error logs are
posted on the wiki there.


> * typical build problems were: "Could not find 'android' on your system"
>   (610), The Gradle Version Thing (740), "You have not accepted the
>   license agreements of the following SDK components" (174; i thought i
>   could fix it but all details to it assume the presence of an `android`
>   executable), ndk missing (101); easily fixable for me are missing
>   python-gpg (22), bzr (17).

* we still need to package the `android` tool, which is required for the
old ant build system.

* there are a couple of workarounds for the gradle version bug, it seems
like the fdroid tools should handle this, the workarounds are described
here:
  https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver/issues/184

* packaging the NDK looks like a large project which we have not started
yet, unfortunately


>   the counts may be off by a factor of 2 some times because i only
>   counted occurrences in the typescript, but give an idea.
> 
> * curious findings: org.poirsouille.tinc_gui seems to try to write to
>   SDK: "Exception while marshalling
>   /usr/lib/android-sdk/build-tools/23.0.2/package.xml. Probably the SDK
>   is read-only". won't bug you in production, but might be worth a
>   warning when a setup is not fully virtualized.

As you know from Debian, we see all sorts of "tricks" in apps that are
included in F-Droid.  That looks like one we should not support.

.hc

> does any of the build problems ring a bell with you that sound like
> low-hanging-fruit you could give me a pointer to? is there anyone else
> or a list i should cc on this (maybe with the context they're missing
> from debienna) working on fdroid in debian?
> 
> liebe gruesze
> christian
> 
> 
> Versions of packages fdroidserver depends on:
> ii  default-jdk             2:1.8-57
> ii  python3-clint           0.5.1-1
> ii  python3-git             2.1.0-1
> ii  python3-libcloud        1.3.0-1
> ii  python3-paramiko        2.0.0-1
> ii  python3-pil             3.4.2-1
> ii  python3-pyasn1          0.1.9-2
> ii  python3-pyasn1-modules  0.0.7-0.1
> ii  python3-requests        2.11.1-1
> ii  python3-yaml            3.12-1
> pn  python3:any             <none>
> ii  rsync                   3.1.2-1
> 
> Versions of packages fdroidserver recommends:
> ii  aapt      1:6.0.1+r55-1
> ii  adb       1:6.0.1+r55-1
> ii  git       1:2.10.2-2
> ii  opensc    0.16.0-1+b1
> ii  zipalign  1:6.0.1+r55-3
> 
> Versions of packages fdroidserver suggests:
> pn  bzr              <none>
> ii  gradle           3.1-2
> pn  maven            <none>
> pn  mercurial        <none>
> pn  php5             <none>
> ii  ruby             1:2.3.0+4
> pn  subversion       <none>
> pn  vagrant          <none>
> pn  vagrant-cachier  <none>
> pn  vagrant-libvirt  <none>
> pn  virtualbox       <none>
>