It looks like they work by patching the WSA installer to get root ?
There's a leap of trust needed, as we'd be putting our google credentials into it, but I guess that's par for the course for what is kind of a jailbreak.
While it's not necessarily a jailbreak (the OS itself isn't the one preventing you from messing with these files) it's very close to injecting Google Play into an Android ROM that doesn't come with it (like custom ROMs, or maybe Chinese import phones).
Google Play isn't just an app you install, you to give it quite a few system level permissions for it to work right. Without root access and a patched system image, Google Play simply can't work right.
Compare it to getting Apple's iPadOS store to work on macOS or iOS. You can't just extract an .ipa and install it like with other apps, you need to modify the surrounding system and drag over some support libraries or the entire thing won't even be able to start. Or try installing Windows 11's file explorer on Windows 10, you'll need the same level of messing about with dependencies and system integration.
One major difference between the unofficial method and the Google method is that there's an API Google uses for remote attestation (SafetyNet) that requires root access to sort-of bypass, but can't be bypassed entirely. If Google's package contains the code to certify the PCs running it, that'd make DRM compatibility possible without hacks upon hacks.
My mental image was closer to a system framework, like adding node.js with npm, assuming that it wouldn't come with the more security restricted parts (NFC access etc) either way.
Yeah it isn't straightforward and you put trust in the community sort of thing. I've forked a previous version of one of the repos that has a GitHub workflow to build it automatically and have gone through that to make sure it's clean. I can make suggestions as to a repo to use but mine is private since they get DMCA notices I believe.
If you go back in the commit history far enough you can find when the actions workflow files were deleted. I used that (and other repos found via search) to set up the auto builds on mine.
