I only distributed through the official Google Play for now. Sorry, I see how this can be a problem if you don’t trust Google but sadly I don’t have the time to distribute this through several channels, and if I have to choose just one, then Google Play makes the most sense (I even had to pay for this btw).
2 Likes
I think you can simply give the link to your source repository to f-droid team, they build APK themselves, which is why I prefer f-droid. If you install from them then binaries are guaranteed to fully correspond to published source code which is open for security review.
3 Likes
And how do you deal with the secret in the app (e.g. the API key) that you cannot make public? I’m sorry but it’s too much hassle just to reassure people that I’m not doing something omnious with the phone. And to be honest I couldn’t do much even if I were inclined to do so since the security on the android phone is quite good.
2 Likes
BTW, found an hour to look at the crash reports (that Google Play provides, unlike f-droid) and fixed the most prevalent issues. Expect an update in a few minutes.
3 Likes
And how do you deal with the secret in the app (e.g. the API key) that you cannot make public?
I honestly think that there is something wrong with architecture of that program or server, if an application package available for download to user has to contain secret which user cannot access.
According to this post OAuth2 Client Credentials - #4 by matburt it’s no longer the case, though, the application just needs regular login and password, same as you enter on the website. It is suggested not to store that but instead get some reauth-token though.
Point of f-droid is not only to make sure that application is not doing anything ominous, though. It’s also that Google Play requires login even to browse and install payment-free applications. Why does google play require password while other software repositories do not?
1 Like
That is the case for ALL apps that are consuming a 3rd party API: they have a secret key that they send to the server to authenticate not the user but the app itself to the server. Anybody with access to that key can impersonate the app. It is a requirement for OGS and is nothing I can do about it.
Bottom line is: if it’s a case of me submitting the APK to f-droid I will probably do it sometimes in the future if I find the time. If it’s a complicated system requiring them to rebuild from source, I’m just not willing to spend the time to do it.
2 Likes
How hard is it to get a new app key? Can it be done automatically?
1 Like
Hey @MrAlex I’ve concluded that the thing I would like most above all is a notifier. I’m actually not that keen to play on the phone - it’s nice when there’s no desktop available, but that’s comparatively rare.
However I would love to not have to keep coming back to my desk to check if there is a move. Or open an app explicitly on the phone. It’d be awesome if the phone dinged when a move is available…
GaJ
2 Likes
Well sorry @GreenAsJade but isn’t my app already doing exactly that? 
Perhaps something is broken for you guys, in which case I need to know, but the way this should work is after you log in I check every few minutes (more often if the phone is plugged in and on wifi) and spawn a notification if it is your move. It should be a bit too slow for live games, but not for correspondance ones.
2 Likes
Hmm - I didn’t even know it tried 
I will leave it open in the background and see what I see. I agreed that a few minutes is absolutely fine.
2 Likes
Is the “plus” button supposed to be doing something or still to early in developement? Because it does nothing for me…
1 Like
Not implemented yet I’m afraid. It’s supposed to open the dialog for issuing a new challenge, but when I realised just how many options there are for a new challenge the motivation just went out of me
1 Like
You don’t even have to leave it “open”… it’s very peculiar that it doesn’t work, did you do anything special to your phone (such as disabled background services or something)?
1 Like
It doesn’t work for me either, on Oreo 8.0.0
1 Like
That’s weird… I don’t get any reports of crashes on the latest version. Does it not work even when plugged in?
1 Like
I’m not sure, with fast charging these days i don’t charge longer then 15-20 min… But I’ll try to keep an eye on that.
Second problem I have is, sometimes it doesn’t submit my moves, I have to kill the app and relaunch it, then it works again…
1 Like
I can confirm that I didn’t have a notification from a move received overnight, I left it open (but in the background).
However, for me the Chrome OGS notifier is also not working, so it may not be your app…
1 Like
Well, the thing is for this feature to work reliably I need one of the backend devs to implement sending of push notifications through Google Cloud Messaging. I am not versed in the politics of this, is there a chance that they could be convinced to do it?
If that doesn’t happen then the only thing I can do is poll and Android REALLY does not want you to do such a thing since it wastes battery. Who knows what settings you guys have that make the battery saving policies really aggressive… and it’s your right to have them so.
1 Like
I switched off the battery optimizations for the app. Lets see what happens…
1 Like
Wait… I think I found the bug, it’s got nothing to do with battery, it’s a change in Android Oreo about how notifications are handled. Thanks for mentioning that in the initial post, otherwise I wouldn’t have figured it out. Please give me a few minutes, you should have a fix soon.
Edit: basically this: https://medium.com/exploring-android/exploring-android-o-notification-channels-94cd274f604c
3 Likes