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Distributing CodeAssist via IzzyOnDroid (F-Droid)

This documents how CodeAssist is published to the IzzyOnDroid F-Droid repository, why the official F-Droid main repo is not used, and the exact steps to cut a release IzzyOnDroid can pick up.

Why IzzyOnDroid and not the official F-Droid repo

The official F-Droid repo builds every app from source on its own buildserver, with no network access for arbitrary downloads and no prebuilt binaries. CodeAssist's on-device Android pipeline cannot meet that today:

  • Prebuilt aapt2 (ide-android/src/main/jniLibs/<abi>/libaapt2.so, fetched from the ReVanced GitHub releases by the fetchAndroidBuildTools Gradle task). aapt2 is itself free software (AOSP, Apache-2.0) but building it from source on the F-Droid buildserver is infeasible, and F-Droid will not ship a binary it did not build.
  • Build-time network download (fetchAndroidBuildTools) — forbidden on the buildserver.
  • Bundled android.jar (ide-android/src/main/assets/android.jar) — the Android SDK platform stubs, shipped inside the APK as the on-device compiler boot classpath. The Android SDK is under Google's non-free SDK licence, so shipping it is a non-free asset.

IzzyOnDroid instead distributes the developer's own prebuilt, signed APK (pulled from GitHub Releases). It requires the app to be FOSS-licensed and free of proprietary trackers/libraries — which CodeAssist is — and discloses any binary blobs as Anti-Features rather than rejecting them.

One-time prerequisites (done in this repo)

  • FOSS licence — LICENSE is GPL-3.0-or-later; declared in README.md.
  • Fastlane metadata — fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/ holds title.txt, short_description.txt, full_description.txt, and changelogs/<versionCode>.txt. IzzyOnDroid reads these for the listing.
  • Promo images (optional) — add to fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/images/: icon.png (512×512, optional — IzzyOnDroid otherwise extracts it from the APK), featureGraphic.png (1024×500), and phoneScreenshots/1.png … (real device screenshots).
  • Public source — https://github.com/tyron12233/CodeAssist (branch main).

Signing — important

The APK published to IzzyOnDroid is signed with the upload key (keystore/upload-keystore.jks, alias upload-key) — the same key used for the Play upload.

Because Google Play uses Play App Signing (Google re-signs with a managed key), the Play-distributed build and the IzzyOnDroid build have different signatures. That is expected and unavoidable: a user cannot update across the two stores; they are independent installs. Keep using the same key for every IzzyOnDroid release so in-store updates work — if the signature ever changes, IzzyOnDroid users must uninstall/reinstall.

Cutting a release IzzyOnDroid can ingest

IzzyOnDroid's updater watches the GitHub Releases of the repo and picks up the APK asset whose versionCode is newest.

  1. Bump the version in ide-android/build.gradle.kts (versionCode must strictly increase; versionName is the human label, e.g. 3.0.0).

  2. Add a changelog fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/changelogs/<versionCode>.txt.

  3. Build a signed release APK (not an AAB — IzzyOnDroid distributes APKs):

    export JAVA_HOME="/Applications/IntelliJ IDEA.app/Contents/jbr/Contents/Home"
./gradlew :ide-android:assembleRelease
# → ide-android/build/outputs/apk/release/ide-android-release.apk

  4. Tag and publish a GitHub release, attaching the APK:

    git tag v3.0.0 && git push origin v3.0.0
gh release create v3.0.0 \
  ide-android/build/outputs/apk/release/ide-android-release.apk \
  --title "CodeAssist 3.0" \
  --notes-file fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/changelogs/31.txt

Requesting addition to IzzyOnDroid (first time only)

Open a Request For Packaging issue at the IzzyOnDroid repo: https://gitlab.com/IzzyOnDroid/repo/-/issues (use the "Request packaging of an app" template), with:

After the app is accepted once, every later GitHub release with a higher versionCode is picked up automatically — no further requests needed.

Anti-Features to disclose

IzzyOnDroid runs the F-Droid scanner over the APK. Declare these proactively so review is smooth:

  • NonFreeAssets — the bundled android.jar (Android SDK platform stubs, non-free SDK licence) shipped as the on-device compiler boot classpath.
  • Prebuilt component — the bundled libaapt2.so binaries (Apache-2.0 source, but shipped prebuilt).

Neither is a tracker and the app contains no analytics, ads, or proprietary libraries. The only network use is the user-initiated Maven dependency download on the Dependencies screen (declared via the INTERNET permission), and the optional install of the user's own built APK via PackageInstaller (REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES).