[Request] Flatpak version of obs-ndi

[Sethox]

I believe it would be easier for the most Linux users that uses Flatpak to have a maintainter of this plugin there. So that means up-to-date plugin for OBS would be easier.
Information about how exists here.

Thank you for your time reading this.

[selwynorren]

Yes please. The flatpak version of OBS works better, however the NDI installer does not acknowledge the flatpak version at all. I had to resort to installing the repository version of OBS in order to get NDI to work.

[reesericci]

OBS released an official flatpak recently, and having support for OBS-NDI is a must and would eliminate the need for a .deb as flatpak works with every distro. Imagine no more "support X distro" issues.

[VMmmTV]

Although the Flatpak version of OBS is more stable, not having the obs-ndi plugin available has meant I've had to revert to using the Snap version of OBS. So another vote for a Flatpak version of obs-ndi.

Thanks!

[gbraad]

It seems attempts were made to get the NDI plugin as a flatpak extension:

• How to Install NDI plugin in OBS flatpak version? flathub/com.obsproject.Studio#59
• https://github.com/flathub/com.obsproject.Studio/wiki/NDI-Support

But since the repo https://github.com/flathub/com.obsproject.Studio is no longer supported, moved to be maintained by https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio, it is unlikely they will take care of the build and publishing of the extension. What can be done?

/cc: @sunix @pierreavizou Would it be possible to provide a means to build against the current OBS Studio build, but maintain the flatpak of the extension here?

[paulpv]

I tried this and failed miserably.
Once I get 4.11.0 out I may give this another try based on what I learned.

[sunix]

Where is Flatpak version of OBS living ?

[paulpv]

@sunix Where is OBS installed if you use flatpak?
It goes in some path similar to:

/var/lib/flatpak/app/com.obsproject.Studio/x86_64/stable/f503a59f4910533f9bcdfb88884782d6460e029c422a73d08cf12d3ee4d14144/

[sunix]

I was talking about the source code of the packaging :)

[sunix]

found it: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/blob/master/CI/flatpak/com.obsproject.Studio.json

[tytan652]

I succeeded making a Flatpak for this plugin, I actually found this issue to ask you if you are against me submitting the plugin to Flathub.

To avoid issue with non-redistributable libraries (e.g. libndi), Flatpak has the extra-data type that allows to download and install the library while installing the Flatpak on the user computer. So the library is not re-packaged in the Flatpak but downloaded from NDI website to the user computer.

My work: https://github.com/tytan652/flathub/tree/com.obsproject.Studio.Plugin.NDI

Edit: I add more context, Flathub prefer that the app/plugin author does the Flatpak maintenance or that the submitter ask for permission to the author.

[paulpv]

FYI, there is also a casual conversation about this on our Discord server:
https://discord.com/channels/1082173788101279746/1174383110553612378

[paulpv]

Of notable mention:

@tytan652 The only unstable part will be when a new version of NDI 5 lands because the checksum will change, so until the manifest get fixed new users will not be able install it
...
@paulpv I'll look into an RSS or some other bot that watches that URL at least every week for a change and ideally posts a message here in Discord.
Hell...even that part could maybe be [near] automated to create a PR with the change ready to at least manually and maybe auto approve/merge.

[paulpv]

I actually found this issue to ask you if you are against me submitting the plugin to Flathub.

Yes, please do submit the plugin to Flathub.

As mentioned above, I will hopefully look into semi-automating creating a PR if a change is detected in https://downloads.ndi.tv/SDK/NDI_SDK_Linux/Install_NDI_SDK_v5_Linux.tar.gz before the next time it changes.