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F-Droid Server Manual
Ciaran Gultnieks and the F-Droid project
This manual is for the F-Droid repository server tools.
c 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 Ciaran Gultnieks
Copyright c 2011 Henrik Tunedal, Michael Haas, John Sullivan
Copyright c 2013 David Black
Copyright c 2013, 2014 Daniel Mart´ı
Copyright Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no
Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included
in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
i
Table of Contents
1
Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2
System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3
Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1
Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4
Simple Binary Repository. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5
Building Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5.1
5.2
More about "fdroid build" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Direct Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6
Importing Applications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7
Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7.1
7.2
7.3
7.4
7.5
7.6
7.7
7.8
7.9
7.10
7.11
7.12
7.13
7.14
7.15
7.16
7.17
7.18
7.19
7.20
7.21
7.22
7.23
7.24
7.25
Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Auto Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Provides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Web Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Source Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Issue Tracker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Donate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
FlattrID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Bitcoin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Litecoin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Maintainer Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Repo Type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Repo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Build . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
AntiFeatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Disabled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Requires Root . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Archive Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Update Check Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Vercode Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Update Check Ignore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
ii
7.26
7.27
7.28
7.29
7.30
8
Update Check Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Auto Update Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Current Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Current Version Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
No Source Since . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
18
18
19
19
19
Update Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
8.1
8.2
9
Detecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Adding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Build Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
9.1
9.2
10
Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Setting up a build server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Signing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
10.1
10.2
Repo Index Signing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Package Signing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Chapter 1: Overview
1
1 Overview
The F-Droid server tools provide various scripts and tools that are used to maintain the
main F-Droid application repository. You can use these same tools to create your own
additional or alternative repository for publishing, or to assist in creating, testing and
submitting metadata to the main repository.
Chapter 2: System Requirements
2
2 System Requirements
The system requirements for using the tools will vary depending on your intended usage.
At the very least, you’ll need:
• GNU/Linux
• Python 2.x
• The Android SDK Tools and Build-tools. Note that F-Droid does not assume
that you have the Android SDK in your PATH: these directories will be specified
in your repository configuration. Recent revisions of the SDK have aapt located
in android-sdk/build-tools/ and it may be necessary to make a symlink to it in
android-sdk/platform-tools/
If you intend to build applications from source you’ll also need most, if not all, of the
following:
• JDK (Debian package openjdk-6-jdk): openjdk-6 is recommended though openjdk-7
should work too
• VCS clients: svn, git, git-svn, hg, bzr
• A keystore for holding release keys. (Safe, secure and well backed up!)
If you intend to use the ’Build Server’ system, for secure and clean builds (highly recommended), you will also need:
• VirtualBox (debian package virtualbox)
• Ruby (debian packages ruby and rubygems)
• Vagrant (unpackaged) Be sure to use 1.3.x because 1.4.x is completely broken (at the
time of writing, the forthcoming 1.4.3 might work)
• Paramiko (debian package python-paramiko)
• Imaging (debian package python-imaging)
• Magic (debian package python-magic)
On the other hand, if you want to build the apps directly on your system without the
’Build Server’ system, you may need:
• All SDK platforms requested by the apps you want to build (The Android SDK is made
available by Google under a proprietary license but within that, the SDK platforms,
support library and some other components are under the Apache license and source
code is provided. Google APIs, used for building apps using Google Maps, are free to
the extent that the library comes pre-installed on the device. Google Play Services,
Google Admob and others are proprietary and shouldn’t be included in the main FDroid repository.)
• A version of the Android NDK
• Ant with Contrib Tasks (Debian packages ant and ant-contrib)
• Maven (Debian package maven)
• JavaCC (Debian package javacc)
• Miscellaneous
packages
listed
in
buildserver/cookbooks/fdroidbuildgeneral/recipes/default.rb of the F-Droid server repository
Chapter 3: Setup
3
3 Setup
Because the tools and data will always change rapidly, you will almost certainly want to
work from a git clone of the tools at this stage. To get started:
git clone https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver.git
You now have lots of stuff in the fdroidserver directory, but the most important is the
’fdroid’ command script which you run to perform all tasks. This script is always run
from a repository data directory, so the most sensible thing to do next is to put your new
fdroidserver directory in your PATH.
3.1 Data
To do anything, you’ll need at least one repository data directory. It’s from this directory
that you run the fdroid command to perform all repository management tasks. You can
either create a brand new one, or grab a copy of the data used by the main F-Droid
repository:
git clone https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata.git
Regardless of the intended usage of the tools, you will always need to set up some basic
configuration details. This is done by creating a file called config.py in the data directory.
You should do this by copying the example file (config.sample.py) from the fdroidserver
project to your data directory and then editing according to the instructions within.
Once configured in this way, all the functionality of the tools is accessed by running the
fdroid command. Run it on its own to get a list of the available sub-commands.
You can follow any command with --help to get a list of additional options available
for that command.
fdroid update --help
Chapter 4: Simple Binary Repository
4
4 Simple Binary Repository
If you want to maintain a simple repository hosting only binary APKs obtained and compiled elsewhere, the process is quite simple:
1. Set up the server tools, as described in Setup.
2. Make a directory for your repository. This is the directory from which you will do all
the work with your repository. Create a config file there, called config.py, by copying
the config.sample.py from the server project and editing it.
3. Within that, make a directory called repo and put APK files in it.
4. Run fdroid update.
5. If it reports that any metadata files are missing, you can create them in the metadata
directory and run it again.
6. To ease creation of metadata files, run fdroid update with the -c option. It will create
’skeleton’ metadata files that are missing, and you can then just edit them and fill in
the details.
7. Then, if you’ve changed things, run fdroid update again.
8. Running fdroid update adds an Icons directory into the repo directory, and also creates the repository index (index.xml, and also index.jar if you’ve configured the system
to use a signed index).
9. Publish the resulting contents of the repo directory to your web server.
Following the above process will result in a repo directory, which you simply need to
push to any HTTP (or preferably HTTPS) server to make it accessible.
While some information about the applications (and versions thereof) is retrieved directly
from the APK files, most comes from the corresponding file in the metadata directory. The
metadata file covering ALL versions of a particular application is named package.id.txt
where package.id is the unique identifier for that package.
See the Metadata chapter for details of what goes in the metadata file. All fields are
relevant for binary APKs, EXCEPT for Build: entries, which should be omitted.
Chapter 5: Building Applications
5
5 Building Applications
Instead of (or as well as) including binary APKs from external sources in a repository, you
can build them directly from the source code.
Using this method, it is is possible to verify that the application builds correctly, corresponds to the source code, and contains only free software. Unforunately, in the Android
world, it seems to be very common for an application supplied as a binary APK to present
itself as Free Software when in fact some or all of the following are true:
1. The source code (either for a particular version, or even all versions!) is unavailable or
incomplete.
2. The source code is not capable of producing the actual binary supplied.
3. The ’source code’ contains binary files of unknown origin, or with proprietary licenses.
For this reason, source-built applications are the preferred method for the main F-Droid
repository, although occasionally for technical or historical reasons, exceptions are made to
this policy.
When building applications from source, it should be noted that you will be signing
them (all APK files must be signed to be installable on Android) with your own key. When
an application is already installed on a device, it is not possible to upgrade it in place to
a new version signed with a different key without first uninstalling the original. This may
present an inconvenience to users, as the process of uninstalling loses any data associated
with the previous installation.
The process for managing a repository for built-from-source applications is very similar
to that described in the Simple Binary Repository chapter, except now you need to:
1. Include Build entries in the metadata files.
2. Run fdroid build to build any applications that are not already built.
3. Run fdroid publish to finalise packaging and sign any APKs that have been built.
5.1 More about "fdroid build"
When run without any parameters, fdroid build will build any and all versions of applications that you don’t already have in the repo directory (or more accurately, the unsigned
directory). There are various other things you can do. As with all the tools, the --help
option is your friend, but a few annotated examples and discussion of the more common
usage modes follows:
To build a single version of a single application, you could run the following:
./fdroid build org.fdroid.fdroid:16
This attempts to build version code 16 (which is version 0.25) of the F-Droid client.
Many of the tools recognise arguments as packages, allowing their activity to be limited to
just a limited set of packages.
If the build above was successful, two files will have been placed in the unsigned directory:
org.fdroid.fdroid_16.apk
org.fdroid.fdroid_16_src.tar.gz
Chapter 5: Building Applications
6
The first is the (unsigned) APK. You could sign this with a debug key and push it direct
to your device or an emulator for testing. The second is a source tarball containing exactly
the source that was used to generate the binary.
If you were intending to publish these files, you could then run:
./fdroid publish
The source tarball would move to the repo directory (which is the directory you would
push to your web server). A signed and zip-aligned version of the APK would also appear
there, and both files would be removed from the unsigned directory.
If you’re building purely for the purposes of testing, and not intending to push the results
to a repository, at least yet, the --test option can be used to direct output to the tmp
directory instead of unsigned. A similar effect could by achieved by simply deleting the
output files from unsigned after the build, but with the risk of forgetting to do so!
Along similar lines (and only in conjunction with --test, you can use --force to force
a build of a Disabled application, where normally it would be completely ignored. Similarly
a version that was found to contain ELFs or known non-free libraries can be forced to build.
See also — scanignore= and scandelete= in the Build: section.
If the build was unsuccessful, you can find out why by looking at the output in the logs/
directory. If that isn’t illuminating, try building the app the regular way, step by step:
android update project, ndk-build, ant debug.
Note that source code repositories often contain prebuilt libraries. If the app is being
considered for the main F-Droid repository, it is important that all such prebuilts are built
either via the metadata or by a reputable third party.
5.2 Direct Installation
You can also build and install directly to a connected device or emulator using the fdroid
install command. If you do this without passing packages as arguments then all the latest
built and signed version available of each package will be installed . In most cases, this will
not be what you want to do, so execution will stop straight away. However, you can override
this if you’re sure that’s what you want, by using --all. Note that currently, no sanity
checks are performed with this mode, so if the files in the signed output directory were
modified, you won’t be notified.
Chapter 6: Importing Applications
7
6 Importing Applications
To help with starting work on including a new application, fdroid import will take a URL
and optionally some other parameters, and attempt to construct as much information as
possible by analysing the source code. Basic usage is:
./fdroid import --url=http://address.of.project
For this to work, the URL must point to a project format that the script understands.
Currently this is limited to one of the following:
1. Gitorious - https://gitorious.org/PROJECTNAME/REPONAME
2. Github - https://github.com/USER/PROJECT
3. Google Code - http://code.google.com/p/PROJECT/ Supports git, svn and hg repos.
Some Google Code projects have multiple repositories, identified by a dropdown list
on the source/checkout page. To access one other than the default, specify its name
using the --repo switch.
4. Bitbucket - https://bitbucket.org/USER/PROJECT/
5. Git - git://REPO
Depending on the project type, more or less information may be gathered. For example,
the license will be retrieved from a Google Code project, but not a GitHub one. A bare
repo url, such as the git:// one, is the least preferable optional of all, since you will have to
enter much more information manually.
If the import is successful, a metadata file will be created. You will need to edit this
further to check the information, and fill in the blanks.
If it fails, you’ll be told why. If it got as far as retrieving the source code, you can inspect
it further by looking in tmp/importer where a full checkout will exist.
A frequent cause of initial failure is that the project directory is actually a subdirectory
in the repository. In this case, run the importer again using the --subdir option to tell
it where. It will not attempt to determine this automatically, since there may be several
options.
Chapter 7: Metadata
8
7 Metadata
Information used by update.py to compile the public index comes from two sources:
1. the APK files in the repo directory, and
2. the metadata files in the metadata directory.
The metadata files are simple, easy to edit text files, always named as the application’s
package ID with ’.txt’ appended.
Note that although the metadata files are designed to be easily read and writable by
humans, they are also processed and written by various scripts. They are capable of rewriting the entire file when necessary. Even so, the structure and comments will be preserved
correctly, although the order of fields will be standardised. (In the event that the original
file was in a different order, comments are considered as being attached to the field following
them). In fact, you can standardise all the metadata in a single command, without changing
the functional content, by running:
fdroid rewritemetadata
The following sections describe the fields recognised within the file.
7.1 Categories
Any number of categories for the application to be placed in. There is no fixed list of
categories - both the client and the web site will automatically show any categories that
exist in any applications. However, if your metadata is intended for the main F-Droid
repository, you should use one of the existing categories (look at the site/client), or discuss
the proposal to add a new one.
Categories must be separated by a single comma character, ’,’. For backwards compatibility, F-Droid will use the first category given as <category> element for older clients to at
least see one category.
This is converted to (<categories>) in the public index file.
7.2 License
The overall license for the application, or in certain cases, for the source code only.
Common values:
•
•
•
•
•
‘GPLv2’ GNU GPL version 2
‘GPLv2+’ GNU GPL version 2 or later
‘GPLv3’ GNU GPL version 3
‘GPLv3+’ GNU GPL version 3 or later
‘GPL’ An unspecified GPL version. Use this only as a last resort or if there is some
confusion over compatiblity of component licenses: particularly the use of Apache
libraries with GPLv2 source code.
• ‘AGPL’ Afferro GPL version 3.
• ‘Apache2’ Apache 2
• ‘MIT’ MIT X11 license
Chapter 7: Metadata
9
• ‘BSD’ BSD license - the original ’4-clause’ version.
• ‘NewBSD’ BSD license - the new, or modified, version.
This is converted to (<license>) in the public index file.
7.3 Auto Name
The name of the application as can best be retrieved from the source code. This is done
so that the commitupdates script can put a familiar name in the description of commits
created when a new update of the application is found. The Auto Name entry is generated
automatically when fdroid checkupdates is run.
7.4 Name
The name of the application. Normally, this field should not be present since the application’s correct name is retrieved from the APK file. However, in a situation where an APK
contains a bad or missing application name, it can be overridden using this. Note that this
only overrides the name in the list of apps presented in the client; it doesn’t changed the
name or application label in the source code.
7.5 Provides
Comma-separated list of application IDs that this app provides. In other words, if the user
has any of these apps installed, F-Droid will show this app as installed instead. It will also
appear if the user clicks on urls linking to the other app IDs. Useful when an app switches
package name, or when you want an app to act as multiple apps.
7.6 Web Site
The URL for the application’s web site. If there is no relevant web site, this can be omitted
(or left blank).
This is converted to (<web>) in the public index file.
7.7 Source Code
The URL to view or obtain the application’s source code. This should be something humanfriendly. Machine-readable source-code is covered in the ’Repo’ field.
This is converted to (<source>) in the public index file.
7.8 Issue Tracker
The URL for the application’s issue tracker. Optional, since not all applications have one.
This is converted to (<tracker>) in the public index file.
7.9 Donate
The URL to donate to the project. This should be the project’s donate page if it has one.
It is possible to use a direct PayPal link here, if that is all that is available. However,
bear in mind that the developer may not be aware of that direct link, and if they later
Chapter 7: Metadata
10
changed to a different PayPal account, or the PayPal link format changed, things could go
wrong. It is always best to use a link that the developer explicitly makes public, rather
than something that is auto-generated ’button code’.
This is converted to (<donate>) in the public index file.
7.10 FlattrID
The project’s Flattr (http://flattr.com) ID, if it has one. This should be a numeric ID,
such that (for example) https://flattr.com/thing/xxxx leads directly to the page to donate
to the project.
This is converted to (<flattr>) in the public index file.
7.11 Bitcoin
A bitcoin address for donating to the project.
This is converted to (<bitcoin>) in the public index file.
7.12 Litecoin
A litecoin address for donating to the project.
7.13 Summary
A brief summary of what the application is. Since the summary is only allowed one line
on the list of the F-Droid client, keeping it to within 50 characters will ensure it fits most
screens.
7.14 Description
A full description of the application, relevant to the latest version. This can span multiple
lines (which should be kept to a maximum of 80 characters), and is terminated by a line
containing a single ’.’.
Basic MediaWiki-style formatting can be used. Leaving a blank line starts a new paragraph. Surrounding text with ’’ make it italic, and with ’’’ makes it bold.
You can link to another app in the repo by using [[app.id]]. The link will be made
appropriately whether in the Android client, the web repo browser or the wiki. The link
text will be the apps name.
Links to web addresses can be done using [http://example.com Text].
For both of the above link formats, the entire link (from opening to closing square
bracket) must be on the same line.
Bulletted lists are done by simply starting each item with a * on a new line, and numbered
lists are the same but using #. There is currently no support for nesting lists - you can have
one level only.
It can be helpful to note information pertaining to updating from an earlier version;
whether the app contains any prebuilts built by the upstream developers or whether nonfree elements were removed; whether the app is in rapid development or whether the latest
Chapter 7: Metadata
11
version lags behind the current version; whether the app supports multiple architectures or
whether there is a maximum SDK specified (such info not being recorded in the index).
This is converted to (<desc>) in the public index file.
7.15 Maintainer Notes
This is a multi-line field using the same rules and syntax as the description. It’s used to
record notes for F-Droid maintainers to assist in maintaining and updating the application
in the repository.
This information is also published to the wiki.
7.16 Repo Type
The type of repository - for automatic building from source. If this is not specified, automatic building is disabled for this application. Possible values are:
• ‘git’
• ‘svn’
• ‘git-svn’
• ‘hg’
• ‘bzr’
• ‘srclib’
7.17 Repo
The repository location. Usually a git: or svn: URL, for example.
The git-svn option connects to an SVN repository, and you specify the URL in
exactly the same way, but git is used as a back-end. This is preferable for performance
reasons, and also because a local copy of the entire history is available in case the
upstream repository disappears. (It happens!). In order to use Tags as update
check mode for this VCS type, the URL must have the tags= special argument set.
Likewise, if you intend to use the RepoManifest/branch scheme, you would want
to specify branches= as well. Finally, trunk= can also be added. All these special
arguments will be passed to "git svn" in order, and their values must be relative
paths to the svn repo root dir. Here’s an example of a complex git-svn Repo URL:
http://svn.code.sf.net/p/project/code/svn;trunk=trunk;tags=tags;branches=branches
For a Subversion repo that requires authentication, you can precede the repo URL with
username:password and those parameters will be passed as --username and --password to
the SVN checkout command. (This now works for both svn and git-svn)
If the Repo Type is srclib, then you must specify the name of the according srclib .txt
file. For example if scrlibs/FooBar.txt exist and you want to use this srclib, then you
have to set Repo to FooBar.
7.18 Build
Any number of these fields can be present, each specifying a version to automatically build
from source. The value is a comma-separated list. For example:
Chapter 7: Metadata
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‘Build:1.2,12’
The above specifies to build version 1.2, which has a version code of 12. The commit=
parameter specifies the tag, commit or revision number from which to build it in the
source repository. It is the only mandatory flag, which in this case could for example
be commit=v1.2.
In addition to the three, always required, parameters described above, further parameters
can be added (in name=value format) to apply further configuration to the build. These
are (roughly in order of application):
disable=<message>
Disables this build, giving a reason why. (For backwards compatibility, this can
also be achieved by starting the commit ID with ’ !’)
The purpose of this feature is to allow non-buildable releases (e.g. the source
is not published) to be flagged, so the scripts don’t generate repeated messages
about them. (And also to record the information for review later). If an apk
has already been built, disabling causes it to be deleted once fdroid update is
run; this is the procedure if ever a version has to be replaced.
subdir=<path>
Specifies to build from a subdirectory of the checked out source code. Normally
this directory is changed to before building,
submodules=yes
Use if the project (git only) has submodules - causes git submodule update
--init --recursive to be executed after the source is cloned. Submodules are
reset and cleaned like the main app repository itself before each build.
init=xxxx
As for ’prebuild’, but runs on the source code BEFORE any other processing
takes place.
You can use $$SDK$$, $$NDK$$ and $$MVN3$$ to substitute the paths to
the android SDK and NDK directories, and maven 3 executable respectively.
oldsdkloc=yes
The sdk location in the repo is in an old format, or the build.xml is expecting
such. The ’new’ format is sdk.dir while the VERY OLD format is sdk-location.
Typically, if you get a message along the lines of: "com.android.ant.SetupTask
cannot be found" when trying to build, then try enabling this option.
target=<target>
Specifies a particular SDK target for compilation, overriding the value defined
in the code by upstream. This has different effects depending on what build
system used — this flag currently affects ant, maven and gradle projects only.
Note that this does not change the target SDK in the AndroidManifest.xml,
which determines the level of features that can be included in the build.
In the case of an ant project, it modifies project.properties of the app and possibly sub-projects. This is likely to cause the whole build.xml to be rewritten,
which is fine if it’s a ’standard’ android file or doesn’t already exist, but not a
good idea if it’s heavily customised.
Chapter 7: Metadata
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update=<auto/dirs>
By default, ’android update project’ is used to generate or update the project
and all its referenced projects. Specifying update=no bypasses that. Note that
this only matters in ant build recipes.
Default value is ’auto’, which uses the paths used in the project.properties file
to find out what project paths to update.
Otherwise, value can be a comma-separated list of directories in which to run
’android update project’ relative to the main application directory (which may
include ’subdir’ parameter).
encoding=xxxx
Adds a java.encoding property to local.properties with the given value. Generally the value will be ’utf-8’. This is picked up by the SDK’s ant rules, and
forces the Java compiler to interpret source files with this encoding. If you
receive warnings during the compile about character encodings, you probably
need this.
forceversion=yes
If specified, the package version in AndroidManifest.xml is replaced with the
version name for the build as specified in the metadata.
This is useful for cases when upstream repo failed to update it for specific tag;
to build an arbitrary revision; to make it apparent that the version differs significantly from upstream; or to make it apparent which architecture or platform
the apk is designed to run on.
forcevercode=yes
If specified, the package version code in the AndroidManifest.xml is replaced
with the version code for the build. See also forceversion.
rm=relpath1,relpath2,...
Specifies the relative paths of files or directories to delete before the build is
done. The paths are relative to the base of the build directory - i.e. the root of
the directory structure checked out from the source respository - not necessarily
the directory that contains AndroidManifest.xml.
Multiple files/directories can be specified by separating them with ’,’. Directories will be recursively deleted.
extlibs=a,b,...
Comma-separated list of external libraries (jar files) from the build/extlib
library, which will be placed in the libs directory of the project.
srclibs=[n:]a@r,[n:]b@r1,...
Comma-separated list of source libraries or Android projects. Each item is of
the form name@rev where name is the predefined source library name and rev
is the revision or tag to use in the respective source control.
For ant projects, you can optionally append a number with a colon at the beginning of a srclib item to automatically place it in project.properties as a library
under the specified number. For example, if you specify 1:somelib@1.0, fdroid will automatically do the equivalent of the legacy practice prebuild=echo
"android.library.reference.1=$$somelib$$" >> project.properties.
Chapter 7: Metadata
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Each srclib has a metadata file under srclibs/ in the repository directory, and
the source code is stored in build/srclib/. Repo Type: and Repo: are specified
in the same way as for apps; Subdir: can be a comma separated list, for when
directories are renamed by upstream; Update Project: updates the projects in
the working directory and one level down; Prepare: can be used for any kind of
preparation: in particular if you need to update the project with a particular
target. You can then also use $$name$$ in the init/prebuild/build command to
substitute the relative path to the library directory, but it could need tweaking
if you’ve changed into another directory.
patch=x
Apply patch(es). ’x’ names one (or more - comma-seperated) files within a
directory below the metadata, with the same name as the metadata file but
without the extension. Each of these patches is applied to the code in turn.
prebuild=xxxx
Specifies a shell command (or commands - chain with &&) to run before the
build takes place. Backslash can be used as an escape character to insert literal
commas, or as the last character on a line to join that line with the next. It has
no special meaning in other contexts; in particular, literal backslashes should
not be escaped.
The command runs using bash.
Note that nothing should be built during this prebuild phase - scanning of
the code and building of the source tarball, for example, take place after this.
For custom actions that actually build things or produce binaries, use ’build’
instead.
You can use $$name$$ to substitute the path to a referenced srclib - see the
srclib directory for details of this.
You can use $$SDK$$, $$NDK$$ and $$MVN3$$ to substitute the paths to
the android SDK and NDK directories, and maven 3 executable respectively
e.g. for when you need to run android update project explicitly.
scanignore=path1,path2,...
Enables one or more files/paths to be excluded from the scan process. This
should only be used where there is a very good reason, and probably accompanied by a comment explaining why it is necessary.
When scanning the source tree for problems, matching files whose relative paths
start with any of the paths given here are ignored.
scandelete=path1,path2,...
Similar to scanignore=, but instead of ignoring files under the given paths, it
tells f-droid to delete the matching files directly.
build=xxxx
As for ’prebuild’, but runs during the actual build phase (but before the main
ant/maven build). Use this only for actions that do actual building. Any
prepartion of the source code should be done using ’init’ or ’prebuild’.
Any building that takes place before build= will be ignored, as either ant, mvn
or gradle will be executed to clean the build environment right before build=
(or the final build) is run.
Chapter 7: Metadata
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You can use $$SDK$$, $$NDK$$ and $$MVN3$$ to substitute the paths to
the android SDK and NDK directories, and maven 3 executable respectively.
buildjni=[yes|no|<dir list>]
Enables building of native code via the ndk-build script before doing the main
ant build. The value may be a list of directories relative to the main application
directory in which to run ndk-build, or ’yes’ which corresponds to ’.’ . Using
explicit list may be useful to build multi-component projects.
The build and scan processes will complain (refuse to build) if this parameter
is not defined, but there is a jni directory present. If the native code is being
built by other means like a gradle task, you can specify no here to avoid that.
However, if the native code is actually not required or used, remove the directory
instead (using rm=jni for example). Using buildjni=no when the jni code isn’t
used nor built will result in an error saying that native libraries were expected
in the resulting package.
gradle=<flavour>[@<dir>]
Build with gradle instead of ant, specifying what flavour to assemble. If
<flavour> is ’yes’, ’main’ or empty, no flavour will be used. Note that this will
not work on projects with flavours, since it will build all flavours and there will
be no ’main’ build. If @<dir> is attached to <flavour>, then the gradle tasks
will be run in that directory. This might be necessary if gradle needs to be run
in the parent directory, in which case one would use ’gradle=<flavour>@..’.
maven=yes[@<dir>]
Build with maven instead of ant. Like gradle, an extra @<dir> tells f-droid to
run maven inside that relative subdirectory.
preassemble=<task1> <task2>
Space-separated list of gradle tasks to be run before the assemble task in a
gradle project build.
antcommand=xxx
Specify an alternate ant command (target) instead of the default ’release’. It
can’t be given any flags, such as the path to a build.xml.
output=path/to/output.apk
To be used when app is built with a tool other than the ones natively supported,
like GNU Make. The given path will be where the build= set of commands
should produce the final unsigned release apk.
novcheck=yes
Don’t check that the version name and code in the resulting apk are correct by
looking at the build output - assume the metadata is correct. This takes away
a useful level of sanity checking, and should only be used if the values can’t be
extracted.
Another example, using extra parameters:
‘Build Version:1.09.03,10903,45,subdir=Timeriffic,oldsdkloc=yes’
Chapter 7: Metadata
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7.19 AntiFeatures
This is optional - if present, it contains a comma-separated list of any of the following values,
describing an anti-feature the application has. Even though such apps won’t be displayed
unless a settings box is ticked, it is a good idea to mention the reasons for the anti-feature(s)
in the description:
• ‘Ads’ - the application contains advertising.
• ‘Tracking’ - the application tracks and reports your activity to somewhere without
your consent. It’s commonly used for when developers obtain crash logs without the
user’s consent, or when an app is useless without some kind of authentication.
• ‘NonFreeNet’ - the application relies on computational services that are impossible to
replace or that the replacement cannot be connected to without major changes to the
app.
• ‘NonFreeAdd’ - the application promotes non-Free add-ons, such that the app is effectively an advert for other non-free software and such software is not clearly labelled as
such.
• ‘NonFreeDep’ - the application depends on a non-Free application (e.g. Google Maps)
- i.e. it requires it to be installed on the device, but does not include it.
7.20 Disabled
If this field is present, the application does not get put into the public index. This allows
metadata to be retained while an application is temporarily disabled from being published.
The value should be a description of why the application is disabled. No apks or source
code archives are deleted: to purge an apk see the Build Version section or delete manually
for developer builds. The field is therefore used when an app has outlived it’s usefulness,
because the source tarball is retained.
7.21 Requires Root
Set this optional field to "Yes" if the application requires root privileges to be usable. This
lets the client filter it out if the user so desires. Whether root is required or not, it is good
to give a paragraph in the description to the conditions on which root may be asked for
and the reason for it.
7.22 Archive Policy
This determines the policy for moving old versions of an app to the archive repo, if one is
configured. The configuration sets a default maximum number of versions kept in the main
repo, after which older ones are moved to the archive. This app-specific policy setting can
override that.
Currently the only supported format is "n versions", where n is the number of versions
to keep.
Chapter 7: Metadata
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7.23 Update Check Mode
This determines the method using for determining when new releases are available - in
other words, the updating of the Current Version and Current Version Code fields in the
metadata by the fdroid checkupdates process.
Valid modes are:
• None - No checking is done because there’s no appropriate automated way of doing
so. Updates should be checked for manually. Use this, for example, when deploying
betas or patched versions; when builds are done in a directory different to where the
AndroidManifest.xml is; if the developers use the gradle build system and store version
info in a separate file; if the developers make a new branch for each release and don’t
make tags; or if you’ve changed the package name or version code logic.
• Static - No checking is done - either development has ceased or new versions are not
desired. This method is also used when there is no other checking method available
and the upstream developer keeps us posted on new versions.
• RepoManifest - At the most recent commit, the AndroidManifest.xml file is looked for
in the directory where it was found in the the most recent build. The appropriateness of
this method depends on the development process used by the application’s developers.
You should not specify this method unless you’re sure it’s appropriate. For example,
some developers bump the version when commencing development instead of when
publishing. It will return an error if the AndroidManifest.xml has moved to a different
directory or if the package name has changed. The current version that it gives may not
be accurate, since not all versions are fit to be published. Therefore, before building,
it is often necessary to check if the current version has been published somewhere by
the upstream developers, either by checking for apks that they distribute or for tags in
the source code repository.
It currently works for every repository type to different extents, except the srclib repo
type. For git, git-svn and hg repo types, you may use "RepoManifest/yourbranch" as
UCM so that "yourbranch" would be the branch used in place of the default one. The
default values are "master" for git, "default" for hg and none for git-svn (it stays in
the same branch). On the other hand, branch support hasn’t been implemented yet in
bzr and svn, but RepoManifest may still be used without it.
• RepoTrunk - For svn and git-svn repositories, especially those who don’t have a bundled
AndroidManifest.xml file, the Tags and RepoManifest checks will not work, since there
is no version information to obtain. But, for those apps who automate their build
process with the commit ref that HEAD points to, RepoTrunk will set the Current
Version and Current Version Code to that number.
• Tags - The AndroidManifest.xml file in all tagged revisions in the source repository
is checked, looking for the highest version code. The appropriateness of this method
depends on the development process used by the application’s developers. You should
not specify this method unless you’re sure it’s appropriate. It shouldn’t be used if the
developers like to tag betas or are known to forget to tag releases. Like RepoManifest,
it will not return the correct value if the directory containing the AndroidManifest.xml
has moved. Despite these caveats, it is the often the favourite update check mode.
Chapter 7: Metadata
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It currently only works for git, hg, bzr and git-svn repositories. In the case of the
latter, the repo URL must contain the path to the trunk and tags or else no tags will
be found.
Optionally append a regex pattern at the end - separated with a space - to only check
the tags matching said pattern. Useful when apps tag non-release versions such as
X.X-alpha, so you can filter them out with something like .*[0-9]$ which requires tag
names to end with a digit.
• HTTP - HTTP requests are used to determine the current version code and version
name. This is controlled by the Update Check Data field, which is of the form
urlcode|excode|urlver|exver.
Firstly, if urlcode is non-empty, the document from that URL is retrieved, and matched
against the regular expression excode, with the first group becoming the version code.
Secondly, if urlver is non-empty, the document from that URL is retrieved, and
matched against the regular expression exver, with the first group becoming the version name. The urlver field can be set to simply ’.’ which says to use the same
document returned for the version code again, rather than retrieving a different one.
7.24 Vercode Operation
Operation to be applied to the vercode obtained by the defined Update Check Mode. %c will
be replaced by the actual vercode, and the whole string will be passed to python’s eval
function.
Especially useful with apps that we want to compile for different ABIs, but whose vercodes don’t always have trailing zeros. For example, with Vercode Operation set at something like %c*10 + 4, we will be able to track updates and build up to four different versions
of every upstream version.
7.25 Update Check Ignore
When checking for updates (via Update Check Mode) this can be used to specify a regex
which, if matched against the version name, causes that version to be ignored. For example,
’beta’ could be specified to ignore version names that include that text.
7.26 Update Check Data
Used in conjunction with Update Check Mode for certain modes.
7.27 Auto Update Mode
This determines the method using for auto-generating new builds when new releases are
available - in other words, adding a new Build Version line to the metadata. This happens in
conjunction with the ’Update Check Mode’ functionality - i.e. when an update is detected
by that, it is also processed by this.
Valid modes are:
• None - No auto-updating is done
• Version - Identifies the target commit (i.e. tag) for the new build based on the given
version specification, which is simply text in which %v and %c are replaced with the
required version name and version code respectively.
Chapter 7: Metadata
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For example, if an app always has a tag "2.7.2" corresponding to version 2.7.2, you
would simply specify "Version %v". If an app always has a tag "ver 1234" for a version
with version code 1234, you would specify "Version ver %c".
Additionally, a suffix can be added to the version name at this stage, to differentiate FDroid’s build from the original. Continuing the first example above, you would specify
that as "Version +-fdroid %v" - "-fdroid" is the suffix.
7.28 Current Version
The name of the version that is current. There may be newer versions of the application
than this (e.g. betas), and there will almost certainly be older ones. This should be the
one that is recommended for general use. In the event that there is no source code for the
current version, or that non-free libraries are being used, this would ideally be the latest
version that is still free, though it may still be expedient to retain the automatic update
check — see No Source Since.
This field is normally automatically updated - see Update Check Mode.
This is converted to (<marketversion>) in the public index file.
7.29 Current Version Code
The version code corresponding to the Current Version field. Both these fields must be correct and matching although it’s the current version code that’s used by Android to determine
version order and by F-Droid client to determine which version should be recommended.
This field is normally automatically updated - see Update Check Mode.
This is converted to (<marketvercode>) in the public index file.
7.30 No Source Since
In case we are missing the source code for the Current Version reported by Upstream, or
that non-free elements have been introduced, this defines the first version that began to
miss source code. Apps that are missing source code for just one or a few versions, but
provide source code for newer ones are not to be considered here - this field is intended
to illustrate which apps do not currently distribute source code, and since when have they
been doing so.
Chapter 8: Update Processing
20
8 Update Processing
8.1 Detecting
There are various mechanisms in place for automatically detecting that updates are available for applications, with the Update Check Mode field in the metadata determining which
method is used for a particular application.
Running the fdroid checkupdates command will apply this method to each application
in the repository and update the Current Version and Current Version Code fields in the
metadata accordingly.
As usual, the -p option can be used with this, to restrict processing to a particular
application.
Note that this only updates the metadata such that we know what the current published/recommended version is. It doesn’t make that version available in the repository for that, see the next section.
8.2 Adding
Adding updates (i.e. new versions of applications already included in the repository) happens in two ways. The simple case is applications where the APK files are binaries, retrieved
from a developer’s published build. In this case, all that’s required is to place the new binary
in the Repo directory, and the next run of fdroid update will pick it up.
For applications built from source, it is necessary to add a new Build Version line to
the metadata file. At the very least, the version name, version code and commit will be
different. It is also possible that the additional build flags will change between versions.
For processing multiple updates in the metadata at once, it can be useful to run fdroid
update --interactive. This will check all the applications in the repository, and where
updates are required you will be prompted to [E]dit the metadata, [I]gnore the update, or
[Q]uit altogether.
Chapter 9: Build Server
21
9 Build Server
The Build Server system isolates the builds for each package within a clean, isolated and
secure throwaway virtual machine environment.
9.1 Overview
Building applications in this manner on a large scale, especially with the involvement of
automated and/or unattended processes, could be considered a dangerous pastime from a
security perspective. This is even more the case when the products of the build are also
distributed widely and in a semi-automated ("you have updates available") fashion.
Assume that an upstream source repository is compromised. A small selection of things
that an attacker could do in such a situation:
1. Use custom ant build steps to execute virtually anything as the user doing the build.
2. Access the keystore.
3. Modify the built apk files or source tarballs for other applications in the repository.
4. Modify the metadata (which includes build scripts, which again, also includes the ability
to execute anything) for other applications in the repository.
Through complete isolation, the repurcussions are at least limited to the application
in question. Not only is the build environment fresh for each build, and thrown away
afterwards, but it is also isolated from the signing environment.
Aside from security issues, there are some applications which have strange requirements
such as custom versions of the NDK. It would be impractical (or at least extremely messy) to
start modifying and restoring the SDK on a multi-purpose system, but within the confines
of a throwaway single-use virtual machine, anything is possible.
All this is in addition to the obvious advantage of having a standardised and completely
reproducible environment in which builds are made. Additionally, it allows for specialised
custom build environments for particular applications.
9.2 Setting up a build server
In addition to the basic setup previously described, you will also need a Vagrant-compatible
Debian Testing base box called ’testing32’ (or testing64 for a 64-bit VM, if you want it to
be much slower, and require more disk space).
You can use a different version or distro for the base box, so long as you don’t expect
any help making it work. One thing to be aware of is that working copies of source trees
are moved from the host to the guest, so for example, having subversion v1.6 on the host
and v1.7 on the guest would fail.
Unless you’re very trusting. you should create one of these for yourself from verified
standard Debian installation media. However, you could skip over the next few paragraphs
(and sacrifice some security) by downloading https://f-droid.org/testing32.box.
Documentation for creating a base box can be found at http://docs.vagrantup.com/
v1/docs/base_boxes.html.
In addition to carefully following the steps described there, you should consider the
following:
Chapter 9: Build Server
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1. It is advisable to disable udev network device persistence, otherwise any movement of
the VM between machines, or reconfiguration, will result in broken networking.
For a Debian/Ubuntu default install, just touch /etc/udev/rules.d/75persistent-net-generator.rules to turn off rule generation, and at the same time,
get rid of any rules it’s already created in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistentnet.rules.
2. Unless you want the VM to become totally inaccessible following a failed boot, you need
to set GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT to a value other than -1 in /etc/grub/default and
then run update-grub.
With this base box available, you should then create makebs.config.py, using
makebs.config.sample.py as a reference - look at the settings and documentation there
to decide if any need changing to suit your environment. There is a path for retrieving
the base box if it doesn’t exist, and an apt proxy definition, both of which may need
customising for your environment. You can then go to the fdroidserver directory and
run this:
./makebuildserver
This will take a long time, and use a lot of bandwidth - most of it spent installing the
necessary parts of the Android SDK for all the various platforms. Luckily you only need to
do it occasionally. Once you have a working build server image, if the recipes change (e.g.
when packages need to be added) you can just run that script again and the existing one
will be updated in place.
The main sdk/ndk downloads will automatically be cached to speed things up the next
time, but there’s no easy way of doing this for the longer sections which use the SDK’s
android tool to install platforms, add-ons and tools. However, instead of allowing automatic
caching, you can supply a pre-populated cache directory which includes not only these
downloads, but also .tar.gz files for all the relevant additions. If the provisioning scripts
detect these, they will be used in preference to running the android tools. For example, if
you have buildserver/addons/cache/platforms/android-19.tar.gz that will be used
when installing the android-19 platform, instead of re-downloading it using android update
sdk --no-ui -t android-19.
Once it’s complete you’ll have a new base box called ’buildserver’ which is what’s used
for the actual builds. You can then build packages as normal, but with the addition of the
--server flag to fdroid build to instruct it to do all the hard work within the virtual
machine.
The first time a build is done, a new virtual machine is created using the ’buildserver’
box as a base. A snapshot of this clean machine state is saved for use in future builds, to
improve performance. You can force discarding of this snapshot and rebuilding from scratch
using the --resetserver switch with fdroid build.
Chapter 10: Signing
23
10 Signing
There are two kinds of signing involved in running a repository - the signing of the APK
files generated from source builds, and the signing of the repo index itself. The latter is
optional, but very strongly recommended.
10.1 Repo Index Signing
When setting up the repository, one of the first steps should be to generate a signing key
for the repository index. This will also create a keystore, which is a file that can be used
to hold this and all other keys used. Consider the location, security and backup status of
this file carefully, then create it as follows:
keytool -genkey -v -keystore my.keystore -alias repokey -keyalg RSA -keysize
2048 -validity 10000
In the above, replace ’my.keystore’ with the name of the keystore file to be created, and
’repokey’ with a name to identify the repo index key by.
You’ll be asked for a password for the keystore, AND a password for the key. They
shouldn’t be the same. In between, you’ll be asked for some identifying details which will
go in the certificate.
The two passwords entered go into config.py, as keystorepass and keypass respectively. The path to the keystore file, and the alias you chose for the key also go into that
file, as keystore and repo_keyalias respectively.
10.2 Package Signing
With the repo index signing configured, all that remains to be done for package signing to
work is to set the keydname field in config.py to contain the same identifying details you
entered before.
A new key will be generated using these details, for each application that is built. (If a
specific key is required for a particular application, this system can be overridden using the
keyaliases config settings.
Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License
24
Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License
Version 1.3, 3 November 2008
c
Copyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
http://fsf.org/
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
0. PREAMBLE
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and
useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom
to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way
to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications
made by others.
This License is a kind of “copyleft”, which means that derivative works of the document
must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public
License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because
free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals
providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to
software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or
whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for
works whose purpose is instruction or reference.
1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
This License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium, that contains a
notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms
of this License. Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in
duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein. The “Document”,
below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and
is addressed as “you”. You accept the license if you copy, modify or distribute the work
in a way requiring permission under copyright law.
A “Modified Version” of the Document means any work containing the Document or
a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into
another language.
A “Secondary Section” is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document
that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document
to the Document’s overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that
could fall directly within that overall subject. (Thus, if the Document is in part a
textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The
relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related
matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding
them.
The “Invariant Sections” are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as
being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released
Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License
25
under this License. If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is
not allowed to be designated as Invariant. The Document may contain zero Invariant
Sections. If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sections then there are none.
The “Cover Texts” are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover
Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under
this License. A Front-Cover Text may be at most 5 words, and a Back-Cover Text may
be at most 25 words.
A “Transparent” copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented
in a format whose specification is available to the general public, that is suitable for
revising the document straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing
editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to
a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise
Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been arranged to
thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. An image
format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text. A copy that is
not “Transparent” is called “Opaque”.
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ascii without
markup, Texinfo input format, LaTEX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly
available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML, PostScript or PDF designed
for human modification. Examples of transparent image formats include PNG, XCF
and JPG. Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can be read and edited
only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or
processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML,
PostScript or PDF produced by some word processors for output purposes only.
The “Title Page” means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following
pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the
title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, “Title Page”
means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work’s title, preceding the
beginning of the body of the text.
The “publisher” means any person or entity that distributes copies of the Document
to the public.
A section “Entitled XYZ” means a named subunit of the Document whose title either
is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in
another language. (Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned below, such
as “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, “Endorsements”, or “History”.) To “Preserve
the Title” of such a section when you modify the Document means that it remains a
section “Entitled XYZ” according to this definition.
The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that
this License applies to the Document. These Warranty Disclaimers are considered to
be included by reference in this License, but only as regards disclaiming warranties:
any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no
effect on the meaning of this License.
2. VERBATIM COPYING
Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License
26
You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or
noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license
notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and
that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use
technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies
you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies.
If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions
in section 3.
You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly
display copies.
3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
If you publish printed copies (or copies in media that commonly have printed covers) of
the Document, numbering more than 100, and the Document’s license notice requires
Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all
these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on
the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher
of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title
equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition.
Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the
Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other
respects.
If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put
the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the
rest onto adjacent pages.
If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100,
you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque
copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which
the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network
protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material. If
you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin
distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will
remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time
you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that
edition to the public.
It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well
before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you
with an updated version of the Document.
4. MODIFICATIONS
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions
of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely
this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing
distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of
it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:
A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the
Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any,
Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License
27
be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as
a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.
B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for
authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five
of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer
than five), unless they release you from this requirement.
C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version, as the
publisher.
D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other
copyright notices.
F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving the public
permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License, in the form
shown in the Addendum below.
G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover
Texts given in the Document’s license notice.
H. Include an unaltered copy of this License.
I. Preserve the section Entitled “History”, Preserve its Title, and add to it an item
stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the Modified Version
as given on the Title Page. If there is no section Entitled “History” in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document
as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as
stated in the previous sentence.
J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to
a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations given in
the Document for previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in the
“History” section. You may omit a network location for a work that was published
at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the
version it refers to gives permission.
K. For any section Entitled “Acknowledgements” or “Dedications”, Preserve the Title
of the section, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the
contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.
L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and
in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the
section titles.
M. Delete any section Entitled “Endorsements”. Such a section may not be included
in the Modified Version.
N. Do not retitle any existing section to be Entitled “Endorsements” or to conflict in
title with any Invariant Section.
O. Preserve any Warranty Disclaimers.
If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify
as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at
your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their
Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License
28
titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version’s license notice. These
titles must be distinct from any other section titles.
You may add a section Entitled “Endorsements”, provided it contains nothing but
endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties—for example, statements of
peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative
definition of a standard.
You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up
to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified
Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be
added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already
includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement
made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but
you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that
added the old one.
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission
to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified
Version.
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License,
under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you
include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents,
unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license
notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical
Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant
Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section
unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or
publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment
to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined
work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled “History” in the various original documents, forming one section Entitled “History”; likewise combine any
sections Entitled “Acknowledgements”, and any sections Entitled “Dedications”. You
must delete all sections Entitled “Endorsements.”
6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released
under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various
documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you
follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all
other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted
document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of
that document.
Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License
29
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent
documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called
an “aggregate” if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the
legal rights of the compilation’s users beyond what the individual works permit. When
the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other
works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document,
then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the Document’s Cover
Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate, or the
electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form. Otherwise they
must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate.
8. TRANSLATION
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations
of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with
translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may
include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions
of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License, and all the
license notices in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you
also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of
those notices and disclaimers. In case of a disagreement between the translation and
the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will
prevail.
If a section in the Document is Entitled “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, or “History”, the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require
changing the actual title.
9. TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly
provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense, or
distribute it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular
copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder
explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright
holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days
after the cessation.
Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if
the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the
first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that
copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the
notice.
Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of parties
who have received copies or rights from you under this License. If your rights have
been terminated and not permanently reinstated, receipt of a copy of some or all of the
same material does not give you any rights to use it.
Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License
30
10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free
Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit
to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document
specifies that a particular numbered version of this License “or any later version”
applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that
specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by
the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of
this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free
Software Foundation. If the Document specifies that a proxy can decide which future
versions of this License can be used, that proxy’s public statement of acceptance of a
version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Document.
11. RELICENSING
“Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site” (or “MMC Site”) means any World Wide
Web server that publishes copyrightable works and also provides prominent facilities
for anybody to edit those works. A public wiki that anybody can edit is an example of
such a server. A “Massive Multiauthor Collaboration” (or “MMC”) contained in the
site means any set of copyrightable works thus published on the MMC site.
“CC-BY-SA” means the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license published by Creative Commons Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation with a principal
place of business in San Francisco, California, as well as future copyleft versions of that
license published by that same organization.
“Incorporate” means to publish or republish a Document, in whole or in part, as part
of another Document.
An MMC is “eligible for relicensing” if it is licensed under this License, and if all works
that were first published under this License somewhere other than this MMC, and
subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into the MMC, (1) had no cover texts
or invariant sections, and (2) were thus incorporated prior to November 1, 2008.
The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under
CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is
eligible for relicensing.
Index
31
Index
A
M
AntiFeatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Archive Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Auto Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Auto Update Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Maintainer Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
N
B
Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
No Source Since . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
binary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Bitcoin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Build . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
P
C
Current Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Current Version Code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Provides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
R
Repo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Repo Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Requires Root . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
D
Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Disabled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Donate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
S
setup, installation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Source Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
F
FlattrID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
U
I
Update Check Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Update Check Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Issue Tracker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
V
Vercode Operation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
L
license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Litecoin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
W
Web Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9