Automatically link from /FDroid.apk to latest version

The repo index documents what the latest version of org.fdroid.fdroid is. Therefore, we should be able to automatically generate a redirect from /FDroid.apk to /repo/org.fdroid.fdroid_*.apk for the current version of F-Droid.

This will prevent having to manually update /FDroid.apk each time there is a new version (see admin#41 (closed)).

I'd like some feedback on the best approach though. We could add a liquid tag to jekyll-fdroid such as {{ latest-fdroid }} or {{ latest-version "org.fdroid.fdroid }} (whatever the synatx is).

However, it seems that it'd be even more useful (though perhaps more work?) if fdroidserver output a symlink to the CV for each package into the repo. That way, I would know (both as a web dev wanting to link to, but also an end user wanting to download) that I can type in https://f-droid.org/repo/org.fdroid.fdroid.apk or https://guardianproject.info/fdroid/repo/info.guardianproject.courier.apk and get the best and most stable version without having to worry about version codes at all.

Thoughts @NicoAlt, @eighthave?

The repo index documents what the latest version of org.fdroid.fdroid is. Therefore, we should be able to automatically generate a redirect from /FDroid.apk to /repo/org.fdroid.fdroid_*.apk for the current version of F-Droid.

This will prevent having to manually update /FDroid.apk each time there is a new version (see admin#41 (closed)).

👍

I'd like some feedback on the best approach though. We could add a liquid tag to jekyll-fdroid such as {{ latest-fdroid }} or {{ latest-version "org.fdroid.fdroid" }} (whatever the synatx is).

I would go with the latter, so we can also show a button on each package detail page just saying "download this app".

However, it seems that it'd be even more useful (though perhaps more work?) if fdroidserver output a symlink to the CV for each package into the repo. That way, I would know (both as a web dev wanting to link to, but also an end user wanting to download) that I can type in https://f-droid.org/repo/org.fdroid.fdroid.apk or https://guardianproject.info/fdroid/repo/info.guardianproject.courier.apk and get the best and most stable version without having to worry about version codes at all.

Indeed, this would be a great feature! The only problem I see is that I don't know how symlinks are handled across different platforms: Linux, Samba share, Windows, Git storage, S3 storage, FTP, ...

added bazaar label

changed milestone to %launch-localized

Historically, we've viewed it as a feature that the FDroid.apk symlink has to be updated manually, or at least separately from the Current Version Code in the build metadata. This allows us to be very conservative with this download, since its the first time install, and therefore the first impression, and least likely to be well tested.

It would be nice to have this process controlled by fdroid-website though. It would also be nice to have the link be updated to F-Droid.apk, matching the app name and domain name.

As for the symlink for each app, fdroidserver will already generate those files, but it doesn't rsync them to the website.

one minor thing I noticed is that the FDroid.apk link is getting localized, e.g. https://f-droid.org/de/FDroid.apk. The link still works, but that seems odd. So if it was easy to fix, it would be nice to do so.

assigned to @eighthave

added deploy label

removed assignee