Add flatpak manifest file

[thejdev]

Hi,

Elementary OS 6 requires Flatpaks for the App Center, as noted in #143 .

To assist with this, I have created a Flatpak manifest file as per the directions listed here: https://docs.elementary.io/develop/writing-apps/our-first-app/packaging#flatpak-manifest

I am able to build the Flatpak and install using: flatpak-builder build com.github.artemanufrij.webpin.yml --user --install --force-clean

Once this pull request is merged, webpin may be resubmitted to the App Center.

Thanks,

Jaidev V.

[dcowan-london]

Hi. Has this been submitted to the EOS App Store?

[thejdev]

@dcowan-london, I don't think this has been submitted to the EOS App Store. I do not think that this manifest file works either (I realised this after the pull request was merged). I believe this may be due to a Flatpak permissions issue - I assume that the app needs to be able to write to /usr/share/applications/ location or ~/.local/share/applications, but I do not know how to do this.

I ended up just building it manually and installing as a .

[dcowan-london]

So the issue seems to be that WebPin tries to put the desktop in GLib.Environment.get_user_data_dir () + "/applications/" (https://github.com/artemanufrij/webpin/blob/master/src/Objects/DesktopFile.vala#L163). GLib.Environment.get_user_data_dir () is XDG_DATA_HOME, which in the Flatpak environment is /home/{user}/.var/app/com.github.artemanufrij.webpin/data, which doesn't exist.

https://docs.flatpak.org/es/latest/conventions.html#desktop-files says that .desktop files should be put in /app/share/applications/, but this directory is readonly by the application.

[dcowan-london]

Another issue: when selecting an icon for an app, WebPin uses the legacy file picker, which is confined to the FlatPak enviroment. This needs to be switched to the FlatPak FileChooser portal (https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/portal-api-reference.html#gdbus-org.freedesktop.portal.FileChooser).

[dcowan-london]

In the .desktop files, Exec needs to be Exec=flatpak run com.github....) for FlatPak

[dcowan-london]

This should probably be an Issue, now. Possibly continuing this issue - https://github.com/artemanufrij/webpin/issues/143?

[dcowan-london]

So the issue seems to be that WebPin tries to put the desktop in GLib.Environment.get_user_data_dir () + "/applications/" (https://github.com/artemanufrij/webpin/blob/master/src/Objects/DesktopFile.vala#L163). GLib.Environment.get_user_data_dir () is XDG_DATA_HOME, which in the Flatpak environment is /home/{user}/.var/app/com.github.artemanufrij.webpin/data, which doesn't exist.

https://docs.flatpak.org/es/latest/conventions.html#desktop-files says that .desktop files should be put in /app/share/applications/, but this directory is readonly by the application.

Well, this was fixed by simply adding - '--filesystem=~/.var/app/com.github.artemanufrij.webpin' to the manifest under finish-args.

Created apps now get added to my Applications menu. But these apps don't appear in the WebPin interface (or work when launched). This is because WebPin gets the list by looking for installed apps (using GLib.AppInfo.get_all () - https://github.com/artemanufrij/webpin/blob/master/src/Services/DesktopFilesManager.vala#L55), and this is not available to FlatPak.

I guess there are two options here - have WebPin keep track of apps itself, or get it's list of apps from the .desktop files in /home/{user}/.var/app/com.github.artemanufrij.webpin/data/applications.

[dcowan-london]

So I've hit another issue. Turns out that GLib.AppInfo ignores .desktop files who's Exec lines contain a path which doesn't exist.

FlatPak apps are launched with flatpak run ..., for example flatpak run com.github.artemanufrij.webpin https://google.com. However, a .desktop file with that as the exec line will be ignored by GLib.AppInfo, as flatpak run doesn't exist in the flatpak container.

There are a few options I can see here. One would be to create some kind of symlink in the flatpak container so that flatpak run does exist.

The other option is to do what AppEditor does: patch GLib (https://github.com/donadigo/appeditor/blob/master/external/glib-appinfo.patch#L1). I don't think that's the best route, but it is an option.

[dcowan-london]

Moved to #143