The fdroidserver tools provide everything you need to set up and maintain your own repos, run an fdroid build server, and even host your own website like f-droid.org. The F-Droid developers mostly work on Debian, Arch, and Ubuntu, so those are currently the best supported platforms.

To setup and maintain your own collection of apps and media from the command line, setup an F-Droid repository using the tools from fdroidserver. To run the full F-Droid build server setup, see Build Server Setup.

• Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/etc
  • Getting a newer version
• Fedora/Archlinux
• Guix
• macOS
  • Homebrew:
  • With only easy_install:
• Windows
  • Windows 10 Subsystem for Linux
  • Cygwin
• Docker Executable Image (any platform)
• Installing the latest code (any platform)
• Building apps
• Building all apps from f-droid.org
• Proprietary, Non-Free libraries

Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/etc

The F-Droid tools, also known as fdroidserver, may be installed from the standard OS package repository. On Debian-based OS’s, this should be enough to install the basic F-Droid setup:

sudo apt-get install fdroidserver

However, it is common to find that the version of fdroidserver available in the standard OS package repository is out of date.

Getting a newer version

A newer version of fdroidserver may be found in the F-Droid PPA or your OS’s backports repository.

• Ubuntu/Mint: use the F-Droid PPA (fingerprint: 9AAC 2531 93B6 5D4D F1D0 A13E EC46 32C7 9C5E 0151):

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fdroid/fdroidserver
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install fdroidserver
  

• Debian: first setup backports, then, substituting your Debian release for ‘buster’: bash apt-get install fdroidserver/buster-backports

Fedora/Archlinux

Since packages in these distros could be newer than the official ones on pypi, installing the dependencies in a separate virtual environment workarounds dependency resolving failures:

python3 -m venv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install -e .

Guix

The tools are also available in the main Guix channel. To install:

guix install fdroidserver

macOS

You can install fdroidserver directly using Homebrew, or easy_install as a last resort:

Homebrew:

1. Preparation: Check the Homebrew formula for instructions. Example:

brew install android-sdk
android update sdk --no-ui --all --filter tools,platform-tools,build-tools-25.0.0

1. Install fdroidserver:

   brew install fdroidserver
   

With only easy_install:

sudo easy_install fdroidserver

Windows

Windows 10 Subsystem for Linux

Starting with the Windows 10 “Anniversary Update”, you can enable an Ubuntu environment that runs in Windows, known as “Bash on Windows”, “Ubuntu on Windows”, or “Windows Subsystem for Linux”.

1. setup Windows Subsystem for Linux
2. install fdroidserver from the F-Droid PPA (fingerprint: 9AAC 2531 93B6 5D4D F1D0 A13E EC46 32C7 9C5E 0151) by running this in the Bash shell window:

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fdroid/fdroidserver
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install fdroidserver
   

Cygwin

1. add Java to your PATH: http://www.kingluddite.com/tools/how-do-i-add-java-to-my-windows-path
2. Install Cygwin https://www.sourceware.org/cygwin/
3. in Cygwin, install these packages: gcc-core git openssh python3 python3-pyasn1 python3-imaging python3-paramiko python3-requests python3-setuptools rsync wget
4. open a Cygwin bash shell and run: easy_install fdroidserver

Then here’s the repo setup:

export ANDROID_HOME=/cygdrive/c/path/to/android-sdk
fdroid init   # the keystore gen will fail

After running fdroid init, you need to set the Windows path to your keystore in config.yml. It is also possible to install fdroidserver in a virtual environment using virtualenv and pip.

Docker Executable Image (any platform)

If you are already running Docker “Executable Images”, then the easiest way to run fdroidserver is to use our executable image

Installing the latest code (any platform)

The easiest way to install the fdroidserver tools from source is to use virtualenv and pip. First, make sure you have the Python3 version of virtualenv or pyvenv installed, it should be included in your OS’s Python distribution or via other mechanisms like dnf/yum/pacman/emerge/Fink/MacPorts/Brew. Then here’s how to install fdroidserver into a Python “virtual env”:

pyvenv fdroidserver-env
. fdroidserver-env/bin/activate
pip install git+https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver.git

You can find variations on this used in the CI tests: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver/blob/master/.gitlab-ci.yml

Building apps

To build apps using F-Droid, Java and the whole Android SDK must be installed. This process is currently only developed on GNU/Linux, but we’d love patches getting it working on macOS and Windows. If you only want to make F-Droid repositories of APK files that you already have or don’t know what this means, then you can skip this section.

In order to build Android apps with the fdroidserver toolchain, Java, the Android SDK, and some other essential tools must be installed. Only parts of the Android SDK are available in Debian, so the Android SDK must be installed manually, as well as the packages that it requires (the Android SDK tools include some 32-bit binaries, so even 64-bit systems need these i386 library packages). The F-Droid tools use the Android SDK to build and inspect apps, so you must have the Android SDK installed and setup before using fdroidserver.

Install the Android SDK and make sure the ANDROID_HOME environment variable is properly set. Be sure to verify the file you downloaded, you can double-check the SHA-1 Checksum on Google’s download page.

$ sudo apt-get install fdroidserver
$ mkdir ~/android-sdk-linux
$ cd ~/android-sdk-linux
$ wget https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-linux-6858069_latest.zip
$ echo "87f6dcf41d4e642e37ba03cb2e387a542aa0bd73cb689a9e7152aad40a6e7a08  commandlinetools-linux-6858069_latest.zip" | sha256sum -c
commandlinetools-linux-6858069_latest.zip: OK
$ unzip commandlinetools-linux-6858069_latest.zip
$ export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/android-sdk-linux"
$ ./cmdline-tools/bin/sdkmanager --sdk_root="$ANDROID_HOME" platform-tools "build-tools;30.0.3"

Note: If you have Android Studio installed, you have the Android SDK installed. It should be located at ~/Android/Sdk instead of ~/android-sdk-linux. You can find the location in Android Studio when you open the Tools→SDK Manager menu.

To add these settings permanently to your shell:

$ echo export ANDROID_HOME=$ANDROID_HOME >> .bashrc

Building all apps from f-droid.org

In order to build all apps that are included in f-droid.org, then a lot more software packages are required:

• all SDK platforms requested by the apps you want to build
• all Debian packages required by every app build process (maven, ant, etc)
• every source code management tool (git, subversion, mercurial, etc)
• every version of the Android NDK that apps use

On top of that, to build apps like they are built on f-droid.org, then the whole Build Server Setup is required. That is a more secure, production-ready setup that requires quite a bit more setup and resources. The build server provisioning scripts provide a useful reference for all the needed bits.

If you want to make your own official releases with the F-Droid tools, then you’ll also need to set up the Signing Process.

Proprietary, Non-Free libraries

The Android SDK is made available by Google under a proprietary license. Within that, the essential build tools, SDK platforms, support library and some other components are under the Apache license and source code is provided.

Google APIs, used for building apps using Google Maps, are free to the extent that the library comes pre-installed on the device. Google Play Services, Google Admob, GCM, and many other third party libraries are proprietary and cannot be included in the main F-Droid repository. The MicroG project is developing free software replacements for some of the most used proprietary Google libraries