[rb-general] Reproducible Android apps: resources.arsc

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

Chris Lamb:
> Hans,
> 
>> We'd like to be shipping reproducible builds now, rather than waiting a
>> couple more years to see this take effect.
> 
> It goes without saying that I share this goal. But perhaps you missed
> the part of my reply that suggested one concentrates on locally
> patching the build tools used in F-Droid instead of papering over the
> problems with disorderfs? (As well as my acknowledgement of Google's
> lamentable development process in this area.)

That would mean backporting the patch to at least 10 different versions,
and maintaining all that.  And in order to build each version, you need
to have the entire Android source tree for each version.  Then you need
to get the builds working with the ~3 different build systems they have
used over that time period.

Remember also, this is the best case scenario.  The likely way this goes
is Google totally ignores the issue, then we would have to maintain our
patches on each new release.

.hc