ooni
Add direct link to OONI Probe app apk
To overcome the fact that in some countries there is no Play Store.
We can possibly use a direct link to the f-droid apk or to the apk in the github release.
Does F-Droid offer links that always point to the latest release? Github offers that but I fail to find built apks in the probe-android repo
Yeah there is a link to the f-droid apk here: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.openobservatory.ooniprobe/.
I think am not sure how to get the latest one automatically though, maybe @eighthave knows if this is possible.
@eighthave the question is if it's possible to get a direct link to the f-droid apk for the latest OONI Probe apk, something like: https://f-droid.org/repo/org.openobservatory.ooniprobe_LATEST.apk
not currently, since we discourage direct downloads. It is much safer to install via F-Droid.
@p1g30n I think we should address this by uploading the built apk to github releases then. I have filed this issue: https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/issues/261.
not currently, since we discourage direct downloads. It is much safer to install via F-Droid.
Yes this is true, however we have heard this request from many users that they would like to be able to directly download the apk to install it as this will allow them to distribute the application also without internet connectivity.
F-Droid has the "Nearby Swap" for that purpose. It also supports mirrors on USB thumb drives and SDCards.
Right, though it requires that the user first installs f-droid and then the app, which adds some friction to the install process. It's probably a good idea to document somewhere this approach as the best practice, but we probably still want to offer also a simple direct apk download.
@eighthave is there a link to some f-droid documentation on how this feature works?
@hellais Using Github would also enable an easy way to display the latest version number on the ooni website using their release API. Maybe it's also possible to automate generating and displaying a sha256 hash for some basic means of verification. If that makes sense I'll add it to the new issue
Seeing that built apks are now included in the android releases ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/releases/tag/v2.2.0 ) here is a propositional draft for displaying them on the ooni website: https://repl.it/repls/DullRoundTests
There seems to be no way to have a static link that always points to the latest apk, this approach is the best I can think of at the moment without having to add stuff server side.
Seeing that built apks are now included in the android releases ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/releases/tag/v2.2.0 ) here is a propositional draft for displaying them on the ooni website: https://repl.it/repls/DullRoundTests
There seems to be no way to have a static link that always points to the latest apk, this approach is the best I can think of at the moment without having to add stuff server side.
Thinking about this more, solving it server side would probably be more elegant (and not rely on the user having Javascript enabled). I'm not familiar with probe-android's build process but maybe there's a way to add a build hook that always generates the link to the latest apk as a data template in Hugo?