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  • App to track Open Source App Repositories

Cross Post from Reddit. Thought this community would be interested as well

Recently I've seen some concerns around using F-droid (apps signed with F-droid keys, slow updates) . I liked the alternative approach mentioned in this YouTube video of using an rss-reader to subscribe to release notifications of projects.

I was keen to try going directly to the repos, but I wanted something a bit more purpose fit, so I built this:

https://github.com/jroddev/android-oss-release-tracker

It will look at the latest release in the repositories (GitHub or GitLab) and compare it to the version you have installed on the device, making it easier to see if there are updates available for you.

This is just a small hobby project and its early so there may still be issues.

I have been testing this on my Pixel 7 with GrapheneOS for a few days with repositories: AuroraStore, NextCloud News, DavX5, NewPipe. It should work with others as long as their repositories are setup in a similar way.

    Nice, thanks for sharing! You may or may not be aware of a similar app, Obtainium. I mention it only in case you want to compare, collaborate or contribute.

      mythodical
      Obtainium was also mentioned on the Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/yq8y6a/track_android_apps_releases_directly_from_the_repo/

      This was my very quick, highly assumptive comparison between the 2:

      Good question. I hadn't heard of Obtainium before, thanks for sharing. They do appear to be similar. Making some assumptions here. Just looking at their GitHub I would say the differences are:

      Obtanium installs apps for you and requires permissions to install apps on the device. My app does not install the apps for you and does not require this permission, it will send you to the webpage where you can download the apk yourself. 'Install app' permission could then be given to your web browser or file browser and not to me.

      Obtainium also needs other additional permissions such as to run on startup and alarm manager (to poll for updates?). My app requires you to open it to check for updates and currently does not run on a schedule or send notifications.

      My app requires the 'query installed packages' permission to determine which version (if any) you have installed. Because Obtanium doesn't have this permission I'm assuming that they're tracking those details internally to their app, meaning that if you install the application direct from the website Obtanium won't be able to see the it.

      Obtanium says that they use web scraping for some data which may break with webpage changes. My app uses GitHub and GitLab APIs for repo information, and files such as build.gradle to determine package name. These are less likely to change over time. If the project is not a standard Android project structure then my application may not be able to determine the packageName.

      Obtanium is a more feature rich application. More apps sources. Import/Export. My app doesn't even have any settings yet (blank page).

      Obtanium is written in Flutter. My app is standard Android+Kotlin.

      Summary - Obtanium is trying to be closer to a feature rich alternative app store. My app is closer to the minimal RSS Tracker.

        jroddev Appreciate the write-up (sorry, I should have read it at the original link before commenting).

        Having used an RSS reader in the past, I do like your minimalist approach. If you're open to ideas or suggestions, having the ability to import a plain text list of URLs would be a huge time-saver. Bumping new releases to the top of the list may also be helpful for those with many apps (but could have a negative effect on the overall UX in other ways too, I suppose). Either way, thanks for sharing!

        Fab... At first look this is simpler than using Read You RSS to do the same job.

        I think for me, it would need to have a way to both import and export lists of apps used in app.

        It is certainly very usable for the moment.

          5 days later

          pdagenius import/export is coming. Hopefully soon.

          There's also an issue I've opened around reducing the number of API calls.

          These two items should put it in a pretty good state.

          5 months later

          Does this proliferate updates across profiles or do we have to manually update every app in every profile?