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#43 Apple Core Audio / QAAC in Linux Flatpak not detected

closed
Robert Kausch
None
2020-12-10
2020-09-02
Paul McAuley
No

I have Wine and Apple Application Support installed on Linux (OpenSUSE Leap 15.2) and I notice that the "Core Audio AAC/ALAC Encoder" option will appear with the AppImage build of Fre:ac v1.1.2 but not the FlatPak. Any way to get it working with the FlatPak?

Discussion

  • Robert Kausch

    Robert Kausch - 2020-09-02

    Flatpak apps are running in a sandbox and don't have access to codecs installed on the host system. So no, the Core Audio encoder cannot be made available in the Flatpak version. Same for the Snap version btw. - it's also sandboxed.

     

  • Paul McAuley

    Paul McAuley - 2020-09-03

    I thought with Flatpak you could configure the sandbox to allow file system access?:
    https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/sandbox-permissions-reference.html

     

  • Robert Kausch

    Robert Kausch - 2020-09-07

    It's possible to access a special view of the host file system with these permissions. And fre:ac makes use of that in order to be able to access audio files you want to convert anywhere on your computer.

    The file system view a Flatpak app gets with the --filesystem=host permission excludes a few important folders, though. Explained here: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/sandbox-permissions.html#filesystem-access

    These directories are blacklisted: /lib, /lib32, /lib64, /bin, /sbin, /usr, /boot, /root, /tmp, /etc, /app, /run, /proc, /sys, /dev, /var

    The host system's /usr folder is made available under /var/run/host/usr and this would theoretically allow executing simple binaries from /usr/bin. Wine, however, is not simple. To run it this way would require reconfiguration of library paths and setting certain environment variables not known to the Flatpak app, such as your local WINEPREFIX.

    So accessing a Core Audio codec installed in the host system's Wine would be difficult at best and - if it turned out to be possible at all - might yield all kinds of unexpected issues depending on the way the Wine installation happens to be configured. Trying to pull this off might also be considered an attempt to break out of the Flatpak sandbox - which is something I don't want fre:ac to be associated with.

    So the bottom line is, if you want the Core Audio codec, just use the fre:ac AppImage. It should work out of the box there.

     

  • Robert Kausch

    Robert Kausch - 2020-10-25
    • status: open --> closed
    • assigned_to: Robert Kausch
     

  • Paul McAuley

    Paul McAuley - 2020-12-10

    I have now noticed with Fre:ac v1.1.3 that I now do not get the Core Audio option at all, even with the AppImage.

    I have Apple Application Support (v.8.6) installed in Wine. Do I need to do anything else to get this working again in v1.1.3?

     

    • Robert Kausch

      Robert Kausch - 2020-12-10

      Unfortunately, there's a bug in fre:ac 1.1.3 that prevents it from finding the Core Audio codec in the usual location. Please use the latest continuous build which already has this issue fixed.

      There also is another problem on systems with newer versions of Wine, though. Apparently recent versions of Wine are incompatible with the 64 bit Apple Application Support package, so you will have to use the 32 bit package (you can use 64 bit fre:ac, though).

      So depending on your system configuration you might have to make sure you have the 32 bit Apple Application Support package installed.

       

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