calendula/docs/RELEASING.md

Releasing Calendula

Calendula is distributed through a self-hosted F-Droid repository. A release is built, signed, and published automatically by .gitea/workflows/release.yaml when a bumped versionName reaches main — the pipeline then creates the matching vX.Y.Z tag and Gitea release itself.

Versioning — the committed version is the source of truth

A release is defined by the versionName/versionCode committed in app/build.gradle.kts:

• versionName = MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH (e.g. 2.1.0)
• versionCode = MAJOR*10000 + MINOR*100 + PATCH (2.1.0 → 20100)

So MINOR and PATCH each have room for 0–99. The release pipeline reads versionName, pins versionCode to the derived value, builds, and — once the APK is published — creates the tag v<versionName> at that commit. The tag is an output of a successful release, not its trigger, so a tag always marks a fully-shipped version (and a failure before publish leaves no tag, so re-running the workflow safely retries).

Published version codes so far: v0.1.0→100 … v1.0.0→10000 … v2.0.0→20000.

Cutting a release

1. Assemble the release branch. Create release/vX.Y.Z and merge the feature/fix branches that make up this release into it. This branch is the release candidate — everything below happens on it, before it reaches main.

2. Move the ## [Unreleased] section of CHANGELOG.md under a new ## [X.Y.Z] — <date> heading (Keep a Changelog format). The text between that heading and the next ## [ becomes both the Gitea release notes and the F-Droid per-version changelog.

3. Bump the committed versionName (and versionCode) in app/build.gradle.kts to the new version. This bump is what triggers the release when the branch merges to main. Then run

   scripts/sync_changelog_to_fastlane.sh
   

   and commit the generated fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/changelogs/<versionCode>.txt. This is what makes the official F-Droid repo show this version's changelog (it reads the changelog from the tagged source tree). The self-hosted pipeline regenerates it regardless, so forgetting only affects the official listing.

4. Verify the release build on a real device — the mandatory gate. The shipped APK is R8-shrunk/obfuscated, and bugs that only appear there, or only on first run, never show up in the debug build or on a device that already granted the calendar permission (this is how the v2.7.0 launch crash slipped through). Run:

   scripts/verify-release.sh
   

   It builds the releaseTest variant (same R8 config as release, debug-signed with a .releasetest suffix so it installs alongside the real app) and resets it to a first-run state. Then, on the device:

   • launch from a clean / permission-not-granted state — the permission screen must appear, no crash;
   • grant access — the calendar must load;
   • add both home-screen widgets and confirm they render;
   • exercise this release's headline changes.

   Only proceed once all of that passes on-device.

5. Merge release/vX.Y.Z into main. That's it — no manual tagging. The merge triggers release.yaml, which detects the new version, builds, signs, publishes to F-Droid, and creates the vX.Y.Z tag + Gitea release. Hold UI releases for on-device review and explicit go-ahead before merging.

The releaseTest build type exists only for step 4 — it is never published. The pipeline always builds and signs the real release variant.

What the pipeline does

CI and release are split so a change is built once on its PR and only does release work when a merge actually cuts a release:

• ci.yaml (on pull_request) — lint + unit tests + a debug assemble (and a Trivy scan), once per PR. Docs/metadata-only PRs skip the Android build but still report a green CI check.
• release.yaml (on push to main, plus workflow_dispatch) — a cheap detect job reads versionName and checks whether a tag for it already exists. Only when it doesn't does the release job run: unit tests on the merged commit, build & sign the release APK with the app key, copy it into the F-Droid repo, generate the per-version changelog, re-sign the index with the repo key, upload repo/ + metadata/, then create the vX.Y.Z tag + Gitea release (CHANGELOG section as notes) and attach the R8 mapping.txt (best-effort). Ordinary merges with no version bump fall through detect and do nothing.

Manual re-sign / recovery

A manual workflow_dispatch of the release workflow runs a re-sign-only path: detect reports it's not a release, so the release job skips the APK build, the version bump, and tag/release creation, and just re-signs the existing F-Droid index with the configured repo key and re-uploads. Use this for key rotation or repo recovery without publishing a new app version.

Secrets (Gitea → repo Settings → Actions → Secrets)

Secret	Purpose
KEYSTORE_BASE64, KEY_PASSWORD, KEY_ALIAS	App signing key — signs the APK. Losing it means existing installs can't be updated.
FDROID_KEYSTORE_BASE64	F-Droid repo signing key (keystore.p12, base64). Signs the repo index.
FDROID_CONFIG_BASE64	F-Droid config.yml (base64) — repo metadata + keystore passwords.
HETZNER_HOST, HETZNER_USER, HETZNER_PASS	Upload target for the F-Droid repo.
GITHUB_TOKEN	Provided by Gitea Actions; used to create the release + attach assets.

The two keys are independent: the app key signs APKs; the repo key signs the index (its fingerprint is what users pin). Neither key nor the F-Droid config.yml is ever uploaded to the server — they live only in CI secrets and are reconstructed in-runner. If FDROID_KEYSTORE_BASE64 / FDROID_CONFIG_BASE64 are unset the workflow fails loudly rather than minting a new repo key (which would break every user's pinned fingerprint).

Key custody & recovery

• Offline backups of both keys (and passwords) live in a password manager. These are the only safe copies — losing them is unrecoverable.
• App key lost → no existing install can be updated again; you'd have to ship a new app under a new applicationId.
• Repo key lost or compromised → rotate it, publish the new fingerprint in the README, and have users remove + re-add the repo. To rotate: generate a new keystore.p12 + config.yml, set them as the FDROID_* secrets, update the README fingerprint, and run the manual re-sign dispatch above.

F-Droid repo

• URL: https://apps.dev.jeanlucmakiola.de/dev/fdroid/repo
• Fingerprint (current): C2C0640402BF458FC0ED957AF0B37AA4C14022E72F89CE90B5965B458CF73425
• Served from the Hetzner storage box. nginx serves only …/fdroid/repo/ — the working dir (key, config, metadata) sits above it and must never be web-reachable. After any webserver change, verify keystore.p12 and config.yml return 404 while repo/index-v2.json returns 200.

Crash deobfuscation

Each release attaches mapping-<version>.txt.gz (the R8 mapping) to its Gitea release. To deobfuscate a user stacktrace, download the mapping for that version and run it through retrace.