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josephgtoday at 2:09 PM2 repliesview on HN

> You can download the app as an .apk from their website if you don't trust Google Play Store.

I wish apple & google provided a way to verify that an app was actually compiled from some specific git SHA. Right now applications can claim they're opensource, and claim that you can read the source code yourself. But there's no way to check that the authors haven't added any extra nasties into the code before building and submitting the APK / ios application bundle.

It would be pretty easy to do. Just have a build process at apple / google which you can point to a git repo, and let them build the application. Or - even easier - just have a way to see the application's signature in the app store. Then opensource app developers could compile their APK / ios app using github actions. And 3rd parties could check the SHA matches the app binaries in the store.


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rcxdudetoday at 2:13 PM

This is what F-droid does (well, I suspect most apps don't have reproducable builds that would allow 3rd-party verification), but Signal does not want 3rd-party builds of their client anyhow.

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