Distribute app via F-droid

[vuldin]

I would like to see if it would be possible to have this app be made available outside of Google Play? This is an important app on my phone, and having it available to install outside of Google Play would go far towards not having gapps on my device. Thanks!

[paulcwatts]

I've uploaded the latest released APK here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/oba-android/apks/SeattleBusBot-v1.5.5.apk

I haven't updated the README yet.

[barbeau]

@joshuapurcell One note: OBA Android has a dependency on Google Maps in its current form, so you'll need at least Google Maps from the gapps collection for OBA Android to run. Do you view this as a problem?

One option to remove this dependency for an f-droid release would be to swap Google Maps for osmDroid in OBA Android. It has 1-to-1 parity with Google Maps API v1 so swap should be relatively simple. I'll add this note to the other ticket where we were tracking Maps API updates.

EDIT June 2019 - We're now using Maps API v2, which isn't compatible with OSMDroid

[vuldin]

Thanks for the responses in this issue thread. I see that information on osmdroid has been added to the above mentioned issue, so this issue likely needs to be closed.

I am just a happy user of this application, but I would like to see this app not rely on any google APIs to function if that were possible. I will be following the discussion in issue #56 .

[poperigby]

Any progress on how this would work?

[barbeau]

@PopeRigby Unfortunately no - there still isn't a drop-in OSS replacement for Google Maps API v2, to my knowledge.

[poperigby]

OSM doesn't have anything like that?

[barbeau]

No - OSMDroid mirrors the Google Maps API v1, which is very different than v2.

[poperigby]

Could you maybe re-open this so it can be used to discuss getting OBA on F-Droid?

[barbeau]

Sure, I just re-opened it.

[barbeau]

I was thinking there was already an open issue for this topic here, but I realized that we have the same thread going on https://github.com/CUTR-at-USF/OpenTripPlanner-for-Android/issues/470.

More specifics on the current obstacles are there.

The most promising option was Mapzen's Android SDK, but Mapzen shut down. Here's the open issue for Google Maps API v2 parity on Mapzen's Android SDK: https://github.com/mapzen/android/issues/225

[poperigby]

Is the SDK useless with Mapzen gone?

[barbeau]

@PopeRigby The Mapzen SDK as-is doesn't have the feature we need to publish an F-Droid version of OneBusAway, and given that Mapzen is gone I wouldn't hold my breath that it gets implemented anytime soon.