Flatpak package and Flathub publication

k8ieone commented 4 months ago

Really liking the app so far, it would be nice if the project was available as a Flatpak.

taylorhadden commented 4 months ago

Sounds like a good idea to me! I'm not really a linux user myself. Is this something you're knowledgeable on / would mind helping out with?

k8ieone commented 4 months ago

No, infortunately I haven't done anything like this before. But I'll try looking into it, my guess is that it shouldn't be too difficult.

k8ieone commented 4 months ago

Alright, I did some initial research and I'm trying to throw a manifest together. I have a question tho. Would you like to publish the finished application on Flathub yourself?

Flathub's policy is that users are allowed to submit applications that they're not the developer of. https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/submission#theres-an-app-that-id-like-to-see-on-flathub-but-im-not-the-developer

But it seems that having the developer publish the application is preferred. https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/submission#someone-else-has-put-my-app-on-flathubwhat-do-i-do

This is still in the future, the manifest is nowhere near ready yet. I just wanted to shoot this question out beforehand.

I'm hoping this might not even matter because once a repository in https://github.com/flathub has been created the publisher gets write permissions and I hope more people can be invited to also have write access. This way we could both manage the application on Flathub. https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/submission/#after-submission

taylorhadden commented 4 months ago

I have no strong preferences about being the primary publisher. If you or anybody else want to help out here, I'd be quite pleased! That's why Tangent is open source now.

k8ieone commented 4 months ago

I might have spoken too soon :sweat_smile:

Tangent being an Electron app using npm for builds complicates things because Flathub doesn't allow network access from the sandbox where the application is built. The workaround for this is to pull the dependencies before the build process starts and then use npm in offline mode for the build. They have tooling and a guide for this, but the Typewriter fork being a local module seems to break their script for dependency fetching. I'm afraid I'm not enough of an npm guru for this :sweat_smile:

In case anyone wants to pick this up, feel free to do so.

I'll post an update if I manage to get any further, but my hopes aren't so high anymore :pensive:

This is what I have so far:

id: io.github.suchnsuch.Tangent
runtime: org.freedesktop.Platform
runtime-version: '23.08'
sdk: org.freedesktop.Sdk
base: org.electronjs.Electron2.BaseApp
base-version: '23.08'
sdk-extensions:
  - org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.node18
# Electron doesn't use a traditional locale format
separate-locales: false
writable-sdk: true
command: run.sh
finish-args:
  - --device=dri
  - --share=ipc
  - --socket=x11
  - --socket=pulseaudio
  # Probably not needed
  #- --share=network
  - --filesystem=home
modules:
  - name: tangent
    buildsystem: simple
    build-options:
      append-path: /usr/lib/sdk/node18/bin
      env:
        NPM_CONFIG_LOGLEVEL: info
        XDG_CACHE_HOME: /run/build/tangent/flatpak-node/cache
        npm_config_cache: /run/build/tangent/flatpak-node/npm-cache
        npm_config_nodedir: /usr/lib/sdk/node18
        npm_config_offline: 'true'
    subdir: main
    sources:
      - type: git
        url: https://github.com/suchnsuch/Tangent
        tag: tangent-v0.7.6
      - type: script
        dest-filename: run.sh
        commands:
          - zypak-wrapper.sh /app/main/electron-sample-app "$@"
      #- type: file
      #  path: io.github.suchnsuch.Tangent.desktop
      #- type: file
      #  path: io.github.suchnsuch.Tangent.svg
      #- type: file
      #  path: io.github.suchnsuch.Tangent.metainfo.xml
    build-commands:
      # build linux
      - npm install --offline
      # install
      #- install -Dm644 -t /app/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/ io.github.suchnsuch.Tangent.svg
      #- install -Dm644 -t /app/share/applications io.github.suchnsuch.Tangent.desktop
      #- install -Dm644 -t /app/share/metainfo io.github.suchnsuch.Tangent.metainfo.xml
      #- install -Dm755 -t /app/bin/ run.sh

taylorhadden commented 4 months ago

Does recursive mode help at all? What kind of errors are you getting?