Please ship FreeDV as flatpak package on FlatHub for Linux user

[Nokia808]

Hello dear.

I would like to request from you to ship FreeDV program as flatpak package on FlatHub. This will make 2 things: 1) make FreeDV available to almost all Linux distros, because flatpak is a universal Linux package, 2) make FreeDV available in it's up to date latest version for Linux user & avoiding delay in the updating process of distro specific packages. For example, I'm on Fedora Linux 38, & freeDV available to me from official Fedora repositories as version 1.8.4 ......

Please see following links for more information about flatpak & FlatHub:

https://flatpak.org/

https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/

https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak

https://flathub.org/

https://github.com/flathub

https://github.com/flathub/flathub

Bellow link you can through it introduce flatpak package to FlatHub as a pull request: https://github.com/flathub/flathub/pulls

Please do not ignore this issue. It is a great solution for Linux.

[tmiw]

Thanks for this feedback. Some work was started on this earlier, see https://github.com/drowe67/freedv-gui/pull/600. It's currently on hold for a few reasons:

1. The initial feedback was negative. While the sample size was pretty small, most people seemed to prefer compiling FreeDV themselves or using distro packages given the overhead Flatpak has.
2. Other higher priority development tasks are currently in progress.

That said, can you gauge how much demand there would be if a Flatpak or AppImage was available? (I'd rather not use Snap because it's Ubuntu specific.) Also, any reason for going with Flatpak specifically vs. AppImage, assuming that there aren't enough developer resources available to support both?

[Nokia808]

If you asked me which prefer flatpak or appimage I will select flatpak because it is much easier for packager to work with it in compare with appimage

I agree with you against Snap. But, flatpak completely different.

[Tyrbiter]

The reason for the slow release of freedv versions on Fedora is because of the many packages that depend on codec2, it is Fedora policy not to have .so version bumps during a release cycle of ~6 months.

[Nokia808]

@Tyrbiter It seem - if I'm not wrong in interpretation of your comment - that your plan to ship FreeDV as flatpak on Fedora flatpak official repositories !! If this is what you meant then there is a strategical miss-understanding between me & you ! I did not ask & will never ask to add FreeDV as flatpak on Fedora flatpak official repositories ! I asked for adding FreeDV as flatpak on FlatHub ! I asked for flatpak on FlatHub (which has no relation with Fedora) to escape away from Fedora extreme policies .... Moreover, most Flatpak users installing their flatpak packages from FlatHub not from Fedora flatpak ....

[Tyrbiter]

No, I do not plan to ask for a flatpak of freedv on Fedora. Personally I do not use any of these packaged applications at all, I do not want my Fedora system messed up with them. I build codec2 and freedv from source, create rpms and install them myself.

Of course if you want to use Flathub then that is up to you, but I suspect that the effort to provide such a package is higher than the demand for it, that is what drives what the developers deploy the project's limited resources on.

[Nokia808]

Keep it at your list with delayed priority. In the future when resources increased, do it at that time.

[tmiw]

Yeah, it won't hurt to keep this open for now. When priorities change, we can definitely revisit for sure.

[tmiw]

Current discussion about Flatpak on the linuxham reflector for those who are interested: https://groups.io/g/linuxham/topic/107122176

[tmiw]

Current discussion about Flatpak on the linuxham reflector for those who are interested: https://groups.io/g/linuxham/topic/107122176