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The Future of Flatpak

(lwn.net)
306 points dxs | 5 comments | 22 May 25 23:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.651s | source
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thangalin ◴[23 May 25 01:45 UTC] No.44069061[source]▶
Years ago, I wrote an on-screen display (OSD) in Java for showing keypresses and mouse clicks[1]. Someone thought a flatpack would be useful[2]. I didn't see the point. It meant: (a) maintaining two installation processes; (b) collating download stats from two sources; (c) trusting a third-party system to maintain package indexes over time[3]; (d) adding yet another package manager to a system that already has a package manager; and (e) bloating the repo with another repo.

Years later, I still only see drawbacks.

[1]: https://gitlab.com/DaveJarvis/KmCaster

[2]: https://github.com/flathub/com.whitemagicsoftware.kmcaster

[3]: https://flathub.org/apps/search?q=kmcaster - whoops!

replies(1): >>44069671 #
rbits ◴[23 May 25 03:41 UTC] No.44069671[source]▶
The upsides would be

- Easy use on immutable distros - The user doesn't have to make sure they have the right version of Java installed - Auto-updates even if there is no repo for your specific distro

And also you can find it through searching on Flathub I guess

replies(1): >>44070438 #
1. thangalin ◴[23 May 25 06:28 UTC] No.44070438[source]▶
> And also you can find it through searching on Flathub I guess

Did you click the third link I posted, which searches Flathub for KmCaster only to come up dry? This was point (c): You have to trust that their search engine is correct, maintained, and updated. That doesn't come for free, it takes effort, and things go wrong.

replies(3): >>44070831 #>>44070905 #>>44070965 #
2. Lariscus ◴[23 May 25 07:54 UTC] No.44070831[source]▶
This isn't a bug. Kmcaster is unmaintained and has been removed from flathub.

[0] https://flathub.org/apps/com.whitemagicsoftware.kmcaster

replies(1): >>44078063 #
3. preisschild ◴[23 May 25 08:09 UTC] No.44070905[source]▶
It comes up as dry because the package is marked as unmaintained

https://flathub.org/apps/com.whitemagicsoftware.kmcaster

https://github.com/flathub/com.whitemagicsoftware.kmcaster/p...

4. ◴[23 May 25 08:21 UTC] No.44070965[source]▶
5. thangalin ◴[24 May 25 01:18 UTC] No.44078063[source]▶
This only supports my point about having more stuff to maintain. Now there's this GitHub page having a large "Download on Flathub" link that goes absolutely nowhere because the package is unmaintained. Who makes the GitHub page go away?

https://github.com/flathub/com.whitemagicsoftware.kmcaster?t...

Also, the image on that page is outdated, which would have been one more thing to maintain. In addition, the install instructions are four lines of code to run, compared with three lines of code to download without Flathub. My point stands: Flathub adds an unnecessary maintenance burden (to some projects).