Add RPM package or Flatpak

[Linux-Is-Best]

It would be great if there was either an RPM package (Fedora, openSUSE), or as an alternative, a Flatpak. The benefit of a flatpak would be it could run on both RPM or DEB based system. A lot of Linux developers tend to go the flatpak route for that reason.

My reasoning for this request is a lot of folks, I know, have been moving away from Debian-based Linux distributions (disclosure, myself, included). But would like to use your download manager.

Either solution would be great.

[amir1376]

why you are not using the installation script ?

[amanullahmenjli]

why you are not using the installation script ?

One of the main advantages of using Linux distros is having all installed programs managed by a package manager (or two if you use flatpak too) which facilitates keeping everything organized and regularly updated.

[amir1376]

I'm planning to add an auto update feature to the app (which you may saw that in apps like discord postman etc...) for this to work I need to have write access to the installation directory because of that I may not be able to add rpm package and remove the deb package too. instead we can improve that installation script until then

[amanullahmenjli]

I think making auto updates optional and allowing the app to be available at least of flathub would be a better solution for linux users. I personally don't like when apps try to manage their own updates and prefer to let that job for my package manager or for flatpak.

[amanullahmenjli]

If you don't want to publish it yourself for flathub would it be fine if I do it as a contributor so it can be labeled as officially published by the app devs on flathub?

[amir1376]

I think making auto updates optional and allowing the app to be available at least of flathub would be a better solution for linux users. I personally don't like when apps try to manage their own updates and prefer to let that job for my package manager or for flatpak.

Of course I will make this optional. you can manually upgrade it using a script.

Unfortunately I don't know much about the flathub you mentioned. and I don't know if it may causes problem later or not.

For example I plan to add Native Messaging feature later to allow browsers to wake up the app when its not running. this feature needs an executable inside the app's directory (which I know that AppImage does not support this thing)

[amanullahmenjli]

Of course I will make this optional. you can manually upgrade it using a script.

That's great to hear.

Unfortunately I don't know much about the flathub you mentioned. and I don't know if it may causes problem later or not.

Flathub is a store or repository that flatpak users can get software from. I'm not sure if flatpak can cause issues or not but I'll try to build this project on my machine with flatpak and see if it can cause any issues then report how it goes here.

For example I plan to add Native Messaging feature later to allow browsers to wake up the app when its not running. this feature needs an executable inside the app's directory (which I know that AppImage does not support this thing)

Can you tell me more about how this feature is going to work?

[amir1376]

Can you tell me more about how this feature is going to work?

You can read more about Native Messaging here

but in short it requires a file to be exists in installation folder and browser can execute it for communication. for example

───app
    \───bin
     |    \───ABDownloadManager (for now we have only this)
     |    \───ABDownloadManager_NativeMassagingHost
     |    \─── ....
     \...

app (and external apps like browsers) requires to have at least read only access to its installation directory. if its converted to a single executable binary (AppImage) then it may not support some features later.