#24 Flatpak packaging

[Ryan]

Hello!

So first comes the ad: Flatpak is a cross-distro packaging technology that lets your build and upload packages that mostly run everywhere. It has first-class support in Fedora, Mint, elementary OS, Pop_OS!, and many other distros.

My computer org class uses QtSpim, and I'm on Fedora Silverblue where your apps are generally Flatpaks. As a result, I took to building a Flatpak package: https://github.com/refi64/flathub/tree/qtspim

As per Flathub policy, ideally upstream is maintaining the Flatpak, which is why I'm posting this here. I figured that Flatpak may be a viable distribution mechanism for QtSpim, especially since currently only deb packages are provided.

[Anonymous]

I second this, I was looking for exactly a Flatpak!
Another viable alternative is Open Build Service.

[James Larus]

If someone would like to provide an alternate packaging for spim, I would be happy to include it. However, I do not have the time or interest in chasing the many alternatives available on Linux.

[Andrés Barrantes Silman]

Since flatpaks pull a lot of stuff, unless you have already used them, an Appimage might be convenient. (think about data caps and people with limited network access )

You can get appimages, yum+debian repos and PKBUILD and using Open Build Service, this might be interesting: https://openbuildservice.org/help/manuals/obs-user-guide/

I'm willing to give Open Build Service a try, but I will have to add this one to the to-do list after I finish this semester (december).

[James Larus]

I would be happy if you would spend the time and effort to make this work and would be willing to add, but it needs to be in a sustainable form -- one that doesn't require knowledge on my part and manuel steps.

To be quite blunt, the packaging systems on all 3 OS have been my biggest time sink for every release over the past decade, none more so than Linux. I spend a few hours fixing bugs and then a few days building the packages, because nothing works from a year before. Very frustrating because the changes to these systems don't seem that signficant or valuable. I am obviously reluctant to take on another packaging system (eg flatpack) that may or may not gain widespread adoption or be around in a few years.

[Andrés Barrantes Silman]

Absolutely, I understand.

Since I still want to learn how to use OBS, it might be an interesting experiment, so I don't really care how much people is going to use it. Once OBS is setup, not much intervention should be needed, AFAIK.

[Ryan]

So actually I needed this ages ago and submitted it to Flathub back then 😅
Page is here: https://flathub.org/apps/details/net.sourceforge.QtSpim
Source is here (manifest is quite simple): https://github.com/flathub/net.sourceforge.QtSpim

[Anonymous]

It really is easier than I thought, it seems like it doesn't need much to run, so we can throw the "Since flatpaks pull a lot of stuff..." idea out the window

I do like the additional note:

...but don't rebuild the help files because the build tool segfaults.

[Anonymous]

Due to lack of time and the expected burnout due to the "virtual" university thing, I think I wont have time to try and port this over to Open Build Service (OBS).
Worth noting that I have been with no internet since the last four months (I hope the internet reads this, you suck kölbi)
I took an attempt to package Ripes (RPM and AppImage) and the process was fairly easy, but the documentation is outdated and has to be read with caution.
Took a look at QtSPIM, however, I don't know how to build it from the terminal (I have zero experience with the QT toolkit, but I guess something could be done with qmake).
OBS can be setup to pull the source files from git and svn instances, BUT, on my case (Ripes) I needed to pull recursively and did not know (or found) how to, so I decided to build the tarball myself.
The results can be found here: https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:andresbs/ripes

Build targets can include Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Leap, Tumbleweed, Arch and AppImage. I am only familiar with the internals of RPM distros (no clue about how to do with dpkg, heard it's kinda messy).

You can setup everything in OBS so that when something is updated over GitHub (as an example), the program is rebuilt automatically.

Happy holidays!

[James Larus]

Welcome to the wonderful world of packages. Every release I spend more time fighting with the package systems on three OSes than I do fixing bugs.

Thanks for your effort, but without a stable, turnkey solution, I am not going to make my life more difficulty by adding a fourth package and second alternative for the platform with the fewest users.

[Anonymous]

Mr. Larus,
Is there an obsolete spim packageI can use with i386 linux Debian 10.8 architecture? Using this command: dpkg -i qtspim_9.1.20_linux64.deb I receive this error message: dpkg: error processing archive qtspim_9.1.20_linux64.deb (--install): package architecture (amd64) does not match system (i386) Hope you are having fun in Redmond, WA.

[James Larus]

Yes, qtspim_9.1.17_linux32.deb (https://sourceforge.net/projects/spimsimulator/files/) should work on this system. Same UI, a few more bugs (but not ones you are likely to run into).

[Anonymous]