Mobile release process

What a mobile release contains (0.1.0)

Engine. Both platforms play through the phone’s own decoders: AVPlayer on iOS, Media3 ExoPlayer on Android, via expo-video. NOVA’s libmpv engine is not in this release (ADR 0007, milestone M2b), so:

• MKV/WebM on iPhone, DTS and TrueHD audio, and styled or image subtitles depend on what the phone supports.
• Subtitle delay and size, Deinterlace and Save frame are shown as unavailable, with the reason.

Licences in the APK

The APK contains no GPL or LGPL code. There is no libmpv and no FFmpeg; the system decoders are part of Android.

• NOVA’s own code: MIT OR Apache-2.0.
• Bundled JS and native libraries: React Native, Expo modules, Reanimated, Gesture Handler, Screens, SVG and AsyncStorage are under MIT, Apache-2.0 or BSD. The generated list is apps/mobile/THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md. It is attached to every release, and the in-app About section points to it.
• Font: Archivo is under the SIL OFL 1.1 (apps/mobile/assets/fonts/OFL.txt).

Privacy

NOVA makes no network requests. The INTERNET permission that React Native declares is unused by NOVA.

The APK asks for no storage or media permission. Files come only through the system picker or a folder the user grants (SAF). The permissions it does not use are removed in app.json: storage, media, microphone, overlay and write-settings.

Build (Android)

Usual path: GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/mobile-android.yml).

• What triggers it: pushing a tag mobile-vX.Y.Z runs the checks, builds the signed APK on a GitHub runner, verifies the signature, and attaches the APK, its .sha256 and the notices to the GitHub release with that tag.
• Signing: the key comes from the encrypted repository secrets NOVA_ANDROID_KEYSTORE_B64 and NOVA_ANDROID_STORE_PASSWORD. The runner deletes it after the build.

git tag mobile-v0.1.0 && git push origin mobile-v0.1.0
gh release create mobile-v0.1.0 --prerelease --title "NOVA mobile 0.1.0" --notes-file <notes>

Local build (same script; on a slow connection the first Gradle run downloads about 1 GB of dependencies):

bash scripts/build-android-release.sh      # → target/mobile/NOVA-<version>-android.apk (+ .sha256)

Requirements:

• Android SDK: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\Sdk.
• JDK 17–21: Android Studio’s jbr works; JDK 24 is too new for this Gradle.
• The release key: ~/.nova/android/nova-release.jks, with credentials in ~/.nova/android/keystore.properties.

Back up ~/.nova/android/. Android installs an update only if it is signed with the same key. The SHA-256 certificate fingerprint of the key is published in each release’s notes.

Do not run the build while a Metro dev server is running: npm ci cannot replace files that Metro has open on Windows.

Release gate (mobile)

Because of the two open checks, the GitHub release is marked pre-release.

Updates

• Android (from 0.2.0): in-app updates (apps/mobile/src/core/updates.ts).
  • At start-up (setting “Check for updates automatically”, on by default) the app asks api.github.com/repos/VED2107/nova/releases for the newest mobile-vX.Y.Z release that carries NOVA-X.Y.Z-android.apk. Desktop tags (v*) and drafts are ignored; a tag without its APK attached yet is skipped.
  • Install downloads the APK into the app cache, checks it against the release’s .sha256 and opens Android’s package installer (REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES). Android accepts it only if it is signed with the same key, which is the real guarantee: a swapped APK with a swapped checksum is still refused.
  • So a release must attach both NOVA-X.Y.Z-android.apk and NOVA-X.Y.Z-android.apk.sha256 (the workflow does), and app.json must raise version and android.versionCode.
  • 0.1.0 has no updater: users install 0.2.0 by hand once.
  • A Google Play build must not ship this updater (Play forbids self-updates outside Play); remove it there.
• iPhone: Expo Go loads the newest JavaScript from the dev server when opened; there is no iOS binary to update.