←back to thread

The Future of Flatpak

(lwn.net)
306 points dxs | 2 comments | 22 May 25 23:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.41s | source
1. apitman ◴[23 May 25 01:18 UTC] No.44068896[source]▶
It's too complex. An application format shouldn't need to rely on 5 different APIs to be secure. And the apps aren't portable. I think something like WebAssembly is going to be the way forward.
replies(1): >>44069661 #
2. zbentley ◴[23 May 25 03:39 UTC] No.44069661[source]▶
I hope you're right. But how is WASM going to answer questions like "how does the application play sound?" or "how does the application request a password from the system keychain?"

WASM solves a lot of problems, but I don't think its chances of providing a uniform API to things like that are any better than Snap/Flatpak's, because those problems are fundamentally not about the runtime/packaging system. They're caused by OS functionality being a fragmented and moving target. Directly executable applications have to deal with those complexities themselves. Containerized applications in WASM/Docker/Snap/Flatpak/whatever rely on the container layer to do it. But someone's software has to chase that moving target, and it moves very fast.