[Android Software Development] Lanchon:
thank you very much for the info!

wow... it took them what, 7 years?? rofl!

android is designed to restrict the freedom of users to replace parts of the (typically proprietary) software users need to run. this was done by google to force their proprietary spyware on our phones.

marvin, the author of microg and of the sigspoof mechanism, ran against this very problem. he is a strong software freedom supporter, and thus he designed a free and open solution to these coercive mechanisms. and he named his solution "signature spoofing".

my app correctly flags lineageos as NOT supporting signature spoofing because lineageos DOES NOT support signature spoofing.

lineageos implemented their own custom restrictive solution that only works for builds of a free software project -microg- made by a particular individual, which is ridiculous. this is exactly as restrictive as the google services mircrog is designed to replace.

it is very important that people know that lineageos DOES NOT support sigspoof. because the crap that they did HURTS microg.

picture this: people might be under the false impression that lineageos supports signature spoofing, and so install it and use it with microg. after a long while, google makes a change that breaks microg. or a user needs a certain feature not yet implemented by microg. whatever the case, a user decides to fix or improve microg. he start working on it, debugs the issue, finds out whats wrong, codes a solution, builds it, but... his code somehow doesn't work! and suddenly he realizes that there is no way for him to contribute to the microg project because he can't test his changes because the sutpid lineageos build he runs doesn't support sigspoof! and it is too late to fix lineageos because it is also signed code, and realizes that in order to work on microg he has to wipe his damn phone and start over! this small private debacle will likely end in microg loosing eventual contributors and contributions. all because the lineageos team can't see past their noses.

lineageos DOES NOT support sigspoof, and if they say they do, they are lying: sigspoof is an open mechansim by which the owner of the device, not some marvin@microg, can choose to spoof/alter certain pieces of code carrying anti-features to neuter them.

this whole spoofsig matter is completely out of scope for this dexpatcher thread. but i chose to answer anyway because it tangentially touches what dexpatcher does. dexpatcher allows people to modify evil but necessary proprietary code to make it less evil. for example, imagine you use a dating app that deletes your messages after a couple of days. well it doesn't really deletes them, it holds them ramson: they are there but you can't see them... unless you pay. for your messages! and for messages people sent to you! (yes, this dating app exists and is widely used.) so you can use dexpatcher to disable this anti-feature and access *your* data (which in europe you could force the company to reveal anyway) by modfing the code of the app. but then, the app asks android for its own signature... and sees it is not as expected, and trigger countermeasures! (banning you? wiping your data?) sigspoof comes to the rescue: you modify the app, sign it with your signature, but ask sigspoof to present the original scammer company cert if anybody asks (including itself)... and then the scammers are happily screwed.

sigspoof is an important mechanism for freedom in android. it enables much more than using a microg build that some sacred anoited guy prepared... starting with the chance to help said anoited guy (marvin, who is the real hero of this story).

so armed with this knowledge, please do the right thing and document in the lineageos wiki its reality: that it does not support sigspoof. and though it has a loophole for running official microg without having sigspoof, it does not allow developing microg or any other software that requires sigspoof. users of microg are better served by using a different OS with sigspoof, even if they are not developers, as that would allow them to run unofficial builds of microg that might contain early fixes for issues they are having. or allow them to switch to a microg fork in case official ever becomes dormant.