srclib | polyglot code analysis library , built for hackability | Plugin library

You do not need to tell F-Droid to update your app - it will do so automatically:

Do I need to tell you when I update?

We will detect new releases of your app and update our metadata accordingly, which will then cause us to check the code and add new builds to our system. Tags help greatly for adding new versions, but do remember to push the tags to the origin repo each time. Of course, if you move source code to a different website, you should tell us. There are currently some issues around detecting new versions when the AndroidManifest.xml is moved so if there is some urgency, you can let us know if that happens.

Some app developers submit merge requests to us with all the relevant build data when they release. You don’t need to do this, but it can speed things up. Historically, as a small community project, we have been slower to process updates than we’d like to be, but this situation is improving all the time.

Our update checks are dumb and just scrape build files: We do not run any build code, so do not use time-based versioning or any other sort of calculating your version at build time (e.g. moving them to multiple subversions that get concatenated at build or even having complex function calls to do this).

I’ve published a new release. Why is it not in the repository?

When we detect a new release, it may take a few days to make it into the repository as the build process runs only once a day. Before the build has completed, the wiki page for your app will list it in :Category:Apps to Update. As long as the text under Versions stating “The current (recommended) version is xxx (version code yyy)” shows the version numbers corresponding to your latest release, we detected it and the APK should be available soon. Just give it some time.

Regarding the CurrentVersion and CurrentVersionCode values in the metadata, my understanding is that F-Droid's updating scripts update them automatically to the current values:

The F-Droid tools can automatically detect and build updates to apps and packages.

Detecting

There are various mechanisms in place for automatically detecting that updates are available for applications, with the UpdateCheckMode field in the metadata determining which method is used for a particular application.

Running the fdroid checkupdates command will apply this method to each application in the repository and update the CurrentVersion and CurrentVersionCode fields in the metadata accordingly.