Use external-data-checker to check for new releases

[flathubbot]

Started test build 52469

[flathubbot]

Build 52469 failed

[xduugu]

Apparently, I am running into https://github.com/flathub/flatpak-external-data-checker/issues/330 if the version is unchanged. :disappointed:

[flathubbot]

Started test build 52474

[flathubbot]

Build 52474 failed

[xduugu]

From https://github.com/flathub/flatpak-external-data-checker#formatting-manifests:

Unfortunately, it is not feasible to preserve JSON-GLib's non-standard / / syntax for comments. As an alternative, dictionary keys beginning with // are ignored by flatpak-builder and can be used for comments in many cases.

finish-args is probably not one of the many cases mentioned in the quote. :-(

I see two options to fix the build:

1. Remove the comments
2. Convert the manifest files to YAML, which natively supports comments

My preference would be option 2. What do you think, @Erick555 ?

[Erick555]

Removing the comments is ok.

I'm bit skeptical of general idea about using f-e-d-c though. New major TB release is around the corner and because of major releases tends to be initially unstable I plan to skip first several releases and keep following the 102.x ones for that period. That would make f-e-d-c annoying to have.

[xduugu]

f-e-d-c supports version constraints, but unfortunately it does not work for the json checker. Other checkers like Anitya would be easier to use, but don't support the parent source check results inheritance that I make use of. I can, however, add an additional filter map(select(.[0] == 102)) to the jq query to pin the major version to 102.

It is also possible to disable f-e-d-c without removing all the x-checker-data configuration by setting "disable-external-data-checker": true in flathub.json.

[xduugu]

I will close this PR as it looks like we finally get an official thunderbird flatpak in the near future. At least there is a lot of activity at the upstream bug report.