Provide APK builds on the GitHub releases page

[leafcutterant]

At the request of @DrewCarlson, I'm doing a duplicate of #56. I want to note that I don't see why you think the original issue is unclear. And even if it is, you could have just asked questions and I could have edited the the original. But anyway.

This issue is a request towards the devs to provide APK builds here on Github whenever you release a new stable version. This means building an APK and signing it from which end users can install BRD. If you're unsure how this looks like, peep the release page of Monerujo. The reason for this request is to make BRD available without the middlemanship of Google. If you don't trust Play Store, don't want to provide Google with your data, or simply don't have access to the Play Store, your other option right now is to go to dubious sites like APK Mirror to get BRD, which is horrible security-wise. A technology that was invented to liberate people shouldn't live within the confines of power broker giants like Google. Handle crypto such that it will still matter 10 years from now.

To answer another part of your request, no, my original issue didn't have anything to do with F-Droid. Of course, the ideal thing would be to just release BRD there, but F-Droid's tooling is weird and many projects fail at being compatible. Therefore I thought the much easier solution should get attention until (if ever) F-Droid is figured out.

[DrewCarlson]

Thanks for the request, we are considering making the signed release APKs available on Github as well as Google Play for archival and users who would prefer a direct download.

Google Play Services and Firebase Remote Config would still be required for the application to function correctly, it would not help in cases where Play Services or Firebase are unavailable.

[leafcutterant]

Thank you Drew! APKs alone will be a big leap forward, I'm looking forward it.

As for the Google Play/Firebase part, it saddens me, but I hope you will consider switching to alternatives in the future. May I ask if there's anything else beyond the buy/sell/trade website that strongly requires these?

[DrewCarlson]

The buy/sell/trade features do not rely on Google Play or Firebase, the website files are embedded in the apk and securely updated from BRD's servers. This is only a blocker when considering F-Droid as that behavior is explicitly not allowed. Currently firebase messaging is used for notifications, remote config to retrieve the Blockset API key, and Crashlytics for error reporting.

[cuilili]

In China, user cannot access google play. So I hope to provide the apk on github for download. :-)

[emanuelb]

Opened issue for publishing APK file in github releases in the newest repo: breadwallet/brd-mobile#2