Build system improvements

[deminearchiver]

This is a draft pull request, I'll mark it as open as soon as it can be considered ready.

Suggestions and comments are always welcome, though!

This pull request will be the first in a hopefully large set of pull request focusing on improving certain aspects of Obtainium's functionality and development.

For example, I am not ready to contribute to Obtainium if it is not using at least the latest stable Flutter version, as it makes development uncomfortable for me by making me have to install another Flutter version. I think other developers looking to contribute to this project are going to support the initiative of making the developer experience a little bit better.

The main goal of this pull request is to improve the developer experience for contributing to Obtainium without introducing code style and linting changes. I will try to limit the changes to configuration files only. I will not be modifying anything Docker or Bash related.

Changes planned in this pull request:

• Migrate to Flutter 3.38:

  • Change Flutter SDK version constraint to >=3.38.0
  • Bump Java version to 17
  • Bump com.android.application plugin version to 8.11.1
  • Bump org.jetbrains.kotlin.android plugin version to 2.2.20
  • Bump ndkVersion to 28.2.13676358
  • Bump Gradle Wrapper to 8.14

• Migrate to Dart 3.10:

  • Change Dart SDK version constraint to ^3.10.1

• Upgrade background_fetch to 1.5.0:

  • Change background_fetch version constraint to ^1.5.0
  • Remove custom repository in android/build.gradle.kts

• Improve Android build system configuration

  • Make having a keystore.properties file optional for release builds - show a warning during build and use the debug signing config

• Migrate from discontinued flutter_markdown to flutter_markdown_plus

[deminearchiver]

Please don't mind unexpected changes to pubspec.lock. I have ran flutter pub get with Flutter 3.38, and it seems some dependency constraints were relaxed in this version, such as meta: 1.17.0.

[ImranR98]

Nice! This looks good so far.

Note I usually run flutter upgrade and flutter pub upgrade --major-versions (followed by some manual testing) before putting out releases. I always assumed this would upgrade all packages (even across major version changes) except where there are compat issues. So I'm surprised to see that background_fetch is not already the latest (even flutter pub outdated doesn't show it as outdated).

[deminearchiver]

Note I usually run flutter upgrade and flutter pub upgrade --major-versions (followed by some manual testing) before putting out releases. I always assumed this would upgrade all packages (even across major version changes) except where there are compat issues. So I'm surprised to see that background_fetch is not already the latest (even flutter pub outdated doesn't show it as outdated).

I usually run flutter upgrade --tighten --major-versions so that dependency constraints in pubspec.yaml are updated along with dependencies.

Following is the output of flutter upgrade --tighten --major-versions --dry-run:

> animations 2.1.1 (was 2.1.0)
> app_links 7.0.0 (was 6.4.1)
  characters 1.4.0 (1.4.1 available)
> cross_file 0.3.5+1 (was 0.3.5)
> file_picker 10.3.7 (was 10.3.3)
  flex_seed_scheme 3.6.1 (4.0.1 available)
  flutter_local_notifications 18.0.1 (19.5.0 available)
  flutter_local_notifications_linux 5.0.0 (6.0.0 available)
  flutter_local_notifications_platform_interface 8.0.0 (9.1.0 available)
  flutter_markdown 0.7.7+1 (discontinued replaced by flutter_markdown_plus)
> flutter_plugin_android_lifecycle 2.0.33 (was 2.0.32)
> http 1.6.0 (was 1.5.0)
  matcher 0.12.17 (0.12.18 available)
  material_color_utilities 0.11.1 (0.13.0 available)
+ objective_c 9.1.0
> path_provider_android 2.2.22 (was 2.2.20)
> path_provider_foundation 2.5.0 (was 2.4.3)
  petitparser 5.4.0 (7.0.1 available)
+ pub_semver 2.2.0
> shared_preferences_android 2.4.17 (was 2.4.15)
> shared_preferences_foundation 2.5.6 (was 2.5.5)
  test_api 0.7.7 (0.7.8 available)
> url_launcher_android 6.3.28 (was 6.3.24)
> url_launcher_ios 6.3.6 (was 6.3.5)
> url_launcher_linux 3.2.2 (was 3.2.1)
> url_launcher_macos 3.2.5 (was 3.2.4)
> url_launcher_windows 3.1.5 (was 3.1.4)
> webview_flutter_android 4.10.9 (was 4.10.5)
> webview_flutter_wkwebview 3.23.4 (was 3.23.2)
  xml 6.3.0 (6.6.1 available)
Would change 19 dependencies.
1 package is discontinued.
10 packages have newer versions incompatible with dependency constraints.

I have reviewed breaking changes on the packages that would get a major or a minor bump, here's a quick summary:

• app_links: Breaking changes only on the iOS platform.
• http: Change the behavior of Request.body so that a charset parameter is only added for text and XML media types. This change doesn't seem to affect the app behavior, as Request.body is not used in Obtainium's codebase.

About the discontinued package: flutter_markdown is discontinued; see flutter/flutter#162966. The flutter_markdown_plus package is a maintained version and a direct replacement for the discontinued flutter_markdown package. I'm leaving this up to you, as this dependency change won't affect anything.

[deminearchiver]

Here's the final chart for all changed constraints:

Changed 13 constraints in pubspec.yaml:
  app_links: ^6.4.0 -> ^7.0.0
  provider: ^6.1.5 -> ^6.1.5+1
  http: ^1.4.0 -> ^1.6.0
  dynamic_color: ^1.7.0 -> ^1.8.1
  url_launcher: ^6.3.1 -> ^6.3.2
  permission_handler: ^12.0.0+1 -> ^12.0.1
  device_info_plus: ^12.1.0 -> ^12.2.0
  file_picker: ^10.1.9 -> ^10.3.7
  animations: ^2.0.11 -> ^2.1.1
  share_plus: ^12.0.0 -> ^12.0.1
  easy_localization: ^3.0.7+1 -> ^3.0.8
  crypto: ^3.0.6 -> ^3.0.7
  flex_color_picker: ^3.7.1 -> ^3.7.2

The actual packages that got upgraded were mentioned in my previous comment.

[ImranR98]

Thanks, I did not know about --tighten. Yes we may as well update the markdown package too.

[deminearchiver]

I'm afraid that I will be going to a hackathon the following week so this PR will unfortunately have to wait a bit.

TODO for me (@deminearchiver) when I come back:

• Update dependencies again (some packages got important updates)
• Implement Gradle keystore fallback to debug in release builds

[deminearchiver]

@ImranR98 I think I'm done here. Could you please review this PR to make sure everything is alright? I'm not in a hurry, take your time.

I added a workaround to only show the signing warning when building for release. It works, but I'm not sure about how reliable it is. I think it'll satisfy this use case though.

[deminearchiver]

I have verified that the latest dependency upgrade doesn't affect any app behaviors. Outdated versions of certain packages were constrained like that because Obtainium was using the equations package. But it has been updated a few days ago and unblocked dependency upgrades for us.

@ImranR98 I know you might be busy currently, but just reminding you to take a look at this whenever you can.

[ImranR98]

Thanks, yes busier than usual lately. Will get around to this and other PRs by next weekend.

[ImranR98]

Thanks @deminearchiver, merged.

[ImranR98]

Fyi I did have to make one change: https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium/pull/2718/files

I use GitHub actions to create unsigned release builds, then sign them manually offline later -- that means I can use GH for a more reproducible/stable build environment without giving them my signing key. Didn't occur to me when looking at the PR earlier.