[Feature] Flatpak package

[patriziobruno]

As a multiple-distribution user, I'd like to have the application packaged using Flatpak, to leverage its sandboxing features.

[johannesjo]

Hey there! I gladly accept Pull Requests for this!

Maybe the implementation is straightforward. Check this for example https://www.npmjs.com/package/electron-installer-flatpak. Ideally it also would be built automatically on travis.

[patriziobruno]

@johannesjo, thanks for the quick reply. The Flatpak could be easily published on super-productivity.com or you can ask to for it to be hosted on flathub.org
I'll have a look to a possible solution and if I can come up with something useful I'll send you a PR.

[johannesjo]

Would have been too easy ;)

Did you mean to use electron-packager instead of electron builder?

sh: 1: electron-packager: not found
npm ERR! file sh
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno ENOENT
npm ERR! syscall spawn
npm ERR! [email protected] build: `gulp build && electron-packager . superProductivity --platform linux --arch x64 --out dist/`
npm ERR! spawn ENOENT
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Failed at the [email protected] build script.
npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.
npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/travis/.npm/_logs/2017-11-30T00_30_03_419Z-debug.log

See: https://travis-ci.org/johannesjo/super-productivity/jobs/309259690

[patriziobruno]

Yes I wanted to use electron-packager, rather than electron-builder, because the latter doesn't support flatpaks. I'm fixing the issue, is it alright if I push a new PR, once I'm done?

[johannesjo]

Sounds great! :) Patrizio Bruno <[email protected]> schrieb am Do., 30. Nov. 2017 um 12:05 Uhr:

…

Yes I wanted to use electron-packager, rather than electron-builder, because the latter doesn't support flatpaks. I'm fixing the issue, is it alright if I push a new PR, once I'm done? — You are receiving this because you modified the open/close state. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#25 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABY4iZyt-V09o95exOgGvZx66-GWUwwYks5s7owHgaJpZM4QlryO> .

[johannesjo]

Closing this due to inactivity. Feel free to reopen!

[kolya-ay]

Actually it would be cool to have such an option. Simply because many distribution will never include electorn (and electron based apps) as a packages and not everyone wants to use both flatpak and (basically ubuntu-specific) snap. I hope, I'm not alone;) However it seems that it's worth to wait till mainstream issue will be resolved

[kaushalyap]

@patriziobruno @johannesjo Any progress with this?

Just publish to Flathub. https://github.com/flathub/flathub/wiki/App-Submission#how-to-submit-an-app

[johannesjo]

@kaushalyap thanks for the input! Please upvote the original issue, if you like to see this happening. Maintaining another deployment target requires – speaking from experience – a lot of time. For this reason, I'll only implement support (myself) when there is a huge demand for it as efforts are probably better focussed elsewhere if only a couple of people profit from this.

[github-actions]

This issue has not received any updates in 90 days. Please comment, if this still relevant!

[shvchk]

🪄✨

[netgrims]

+1 on this. Though I'm afraid I don't have any experience with this kind of stuff either.

On the subject of reaching the most users, I'm not sure if snap is still the way to go. There aren't any exact numbers, but there are estimates (see https://lunduke.substack.com/p/ubuntu-facing-declining-marketshare, https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=ranking&sort=votes and https://itsfoss.com/linux-market-share/). It's not dramatic, but doesn't look great for Ubuntu.

[Talleyrand-34]

+1

[gromenauer]

This issue seems the most voted now https://github.com/johannesjo/super-productivity/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc

[DelicateIntegral]

Isn't this the flatpak for this app? It;s not updated though if it is.
https://github.com/FilBot3/com.superproductivity.SuperProductivity

[johannesjo]

Isn't this the flatpak for this app? It;s not updated though if it is. https://github.com/FilBot3/com.superproductivity.SuperProductivity

No. Not up to date any more. Building flatpak isn't the problem anymore. What is problematic is publishing to flathub.

[johannesjo]

I asked the flathub people if they would allow pushing binaries for Super Productivity as they do with Spotify and other popular apps. Never got a response unfortunately.

@ALL: If more people would start bothering them about this, maybe they would consider this...

[patriziobruno]

I asked the flathub people if they would allow pushing binaries for Super Productivity as they do with Spotify and other popular apps. Never got a response unfortunately.

@ALL: If more people would start bothering them about this, maybe they would consider this...

They do allow pushing binaries. All you need is to follow their onboarding guide https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/submission/

There's plenty of non-OSS software on Flathub and publishing it didn't require any special permission by the "flathub people".

[johannesjo]

Not sure @patriziobruno . We would need to able to publish single flatpak file to make things work as smoothly as possible and to my knowledge this is not possible for everyone, but reserved for only some special projects:

https://discourse.flathub.org/t/is-it-possible-to-publish-a-self-contained-flatpak-file-to-flathub/2083

Everything else seems very tedious to setup. Though I'd be open if someone would offer help with it.

[patriziobruno]

You're right, it's not possible to push flatpak binaries. But it's also true that flatpak binaries are basically a hack. I'm not surprised they're not prioritizing that approach. Setting up a flathub repo to deliver your application is not a huge deal. You're already building an AppImage package, you can use it the same way as here https://github.com/flathub/io.stoplight.studio

[DelicateIntegral]

So, is there any scope for resolving this?

[johannesjo]

So, is there any scope for resolving this?

Correct me if I am wrong @patriziobruno , but I think there are two approaches:

1. We bother the flatpak people to allow publishing Super Productivity as a single flatpak file, as they do for other apps (like Spotify ?).
2. Someone (not me, sorry :)) goes through the hassle to setup "traditional" automated(!) flatpak publishing. Not sure what the steps are, that need to be done, but it likely will be an entire buildchain just for flatpak.

[aripollak]

I think there's also a third option, which is to build the single flatpak file with electron-builder and just publish it alongside all the other binaries on GitHub. This probably wouldn't be the preferred option for users since it wouldn't auto-update. I have some extra time this week so I'm going to try to set up option 2. Unfortunately option 2 does mean some of the build process would live in a separate repo. They do have an auto-updater bot that would make most updates just a matter of clicking a merge button in a PR, assuming you don't want to auto-merge.

Ongoing build notes:

• Sandbox permissions
• .yml manifest reference
• Flatpak Electron tutorial - as much as I'd like to build Super Productivity from source for Flathub, particularly since there are currently no Linux arm64 binaries published, that would end up being more complex because Flathub won't automatically update npm package dependencies itself.

[johannesjo]

Thank you @aripollak ! Please let me know, if you have any questions!

The subject with the automerge depends on the specifics. What files would be affected and how often?

[aripollak]

The subject with the automerge depends on the specifics. What files would be affected and how often?

This would just affect the external flathub repo for the Super Productivity package flatpak source. More info here. Here's an example of an update PR.

[johannesjo]

@aripollak Thank you! To me it looks like a dedicated repository is a good solution.

[aripollak]

@johannesjo I currently have working flatpak package source code at https://github.com/aripollak/flathub/tree/superproductivity. To build and install it locally, once you have flatpak-builder installed:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists --user flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak-builder build com.super_productivity.SuperProductivity.yml --install-deps-from=flathub --user --install

And then you can run it with:

flatpak run com.super_productivity.SuperProductivity

Do you want to review to see if it looks good to you? I could submit the PR with flathub myself and add you as a collaborator, or you could create the PR. It should be set up to automatically submit a PR for the new (not yet existing) flathub repo to update the package source and release a new version to flathub. It's set up to build only regular stable releases from GitHub, not prereleases. It'll need to be verified using this process.

[johannesjo]

@aripollak that would be great! Personally I am not using flatpak much, so this would not be a passion project of mine. I am all the more grateful if you would handle publishing and maintaining the flathub release, if this is alright for you?

Maybe you can get in touch via [email protected] to align for the verification? We can use super-productivity.com for that, I think.

[aripollak]

Just so I have this written down somewhere public. Hopefully it will be obsolete at some point in the future with more stable Electron Wayland support, or we could just decide to enable it by default, or include it in the documentation somewhere.

Wayland

To tell this package to always run with native Wayland support (for example, to support sharper text with mixed-DPI displays or allow idle tracking to work under Wayland), run:

flatpak override --user --socket=wayland --env=ELECTRON_OZONE_PLATFORM_HINT=auto org.super_productivity.SuperProductivity

To reset the package back to its default settings, run:

flatpak override --user --reset org.super_productivity.SuperProductivity

If you prefer a graphical user interface instead of using the commandline, these settings can be modified with Flatseal.

Another alternative is to run Super Productivity manually with the options enabled:

flatpak run --socket=wayland --env=ELECTRON_OZONE_PLATFORM_HINT=auto org.super_productivity.SuperProductivity

[johannesjo]

Thank you so much @aripollak !

The very first flathub release now seams to be available:
https://flathub.org/apps/com.super_productivity.SuperProductivity

🎉💫🥳❤️

[aripollak]

Further coordination discussion taking place at #3740