Getting your ExApp into the world — why packaging matters

ExApp packaging is significantly different from PHP app packaging. A PHP app is a zip of source files — Nextcloud unpacks it and loads the PHP directly. An ExApp is a Docker image — Nextcloud tells AppAPI to pull and run a container. This means:

• The app store doesn't host your code — it hosts a reference to your Docker image on a registry (GitHub Container Registry, Docker Hub, etc.)
• Every release requires building and pushing a new Docker image, not just creating a tarball
• Your image must support both linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 to work on all Nextcloud server hardware
• appinfo/info.xml must include the <docker-install> block pointing to your image

The upside: updates are atomic, rollback is straightforward (just re-register the previous image tag), and your runtime environment is perfectly reproducible.