F-Droid Flavor Swap Audit & Execution

Date: 2026-03-28
Status: ✅ SUCCESS - Clean swap, no code changes needed

Flavor Differences

The Element X Android build flavors are minimal:

Aspect	Gplay	F-Droid
`SHORT_FLAVOR_DESCRIPTION`	"G"	"F"
`FLAVOR_DESCRIPTION`	"GooglePlay"	"FDroid"
Push Provider	Firebase (FCM)	UnifiedPush only
Flavor-specific source dirs	None	None

Key finding: No app/src/gplay or app/src/fdroid directories exist — flavors only differ by build config strings and conditional dependencies.

Push Provider Architecture

if (ModulesConfig.pushProvidersConfig.includeFirebase) {
    "gplayImplementation"(projects.libraries.pushproviders.firebase)  // Gplay only
}
if (ModulesConfig.pushProvidersConfig.includeUnifiedPush) {
    implementation(projects.libraries.pushproviders.unifiedpush)  // Both flavors
}

Firebase push is gplay-only via gplayImplementation. UnifiedPush is included in both.

Google Dependencies Check

google-services.json: Not present in repo ✅
Google Services plugin: Commented out in build.gradle.kts ✅
Firebase App Distribution: Used for CI only, not runtime dependency ✅

Custom Code (ADA) Check

Searched features/wallet/ and libraries/matrix/ for:

gplay, GPlay, firebase, Firebase, FCM, fcm, google-services

Result: No matches. Our wallet code has zero Google/Gplay dependencies. ✅

Build Result

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 1m 42s
3808 actionable tasks: 23 executed, 1 from cache, 3784 up-to-date

APK Outputs

Variant	Size
arm64-v8a	206M
armeabi-v7a	93M
universal	382M
x86	100M
x86_64	210M

Location: /tmp/element-x-android/app/build/outputs/apk/fdroid/debug/

APK Download

Serving arm64 APK on Lucy:

http://192.168.0.5:8888

Changes Required

None. The swap from :app:assembleGplayDebug to :app:assembleFdroidDebug is purely a build target change. No source code modifications needed.

Recommendation

For ADA, F-Droid is the cleaner choice:

No Firebase/Google Play Services dependencies
Simpler push architecture (UnifiedPush only)
No google-services.json required
Better for privacy-focused crypto wallet users

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