SRU Flatpak releases in Ubuntu

[Ads20000]

As Joe Sneddon of OMG! Ubuntu! says, it's annoying that at the moment one has to add a PPA to use a universal packaging format which should do away with PPAs and the like... Would it be possible (even though it is a rather involved process - though the snappy developers manage it) to get Flatpak releases SRU'd into supported Ubuntu releases (14.04, 16.04, and 17.04)?

[Ads20000]

I notice that snapd has a process which it goes through for SRU's and I imagine Flatpak would need to undergo a similar process. I'm guessing someone here has contacts with the Ubuntu developers so they can ask how to go about doing this?

Here's an example of the most recent snapd release being SRU'd into all supported Ubuntu releases (so that the new release is available without a PPA being necessary) - that process hasn't completed yet.

This is a completed SRU of snapd.

[smcv]

This is something you would have to request in Ubuntu. The Flatpak upstream developers do not have control over what downstream distributions do with Flatpak.

[mhall119]

It would require collaboration between Ubuntu and Flatpak developers, and I believe the Flatpak developers would have to be the ones to initiate it

[Ads20000]

It would not be hard to get started, I think Flatpak should file an SRU as a bug in Launchpad against the Flatpak package, then the Ubuntu developers would have to respond (or leave the request hanging, in which case it would be the Ubuntu developers' fault that the package isn't SRU'd and we'd know clearly where the blame lies) :)

[mhall119]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates describes the process. The fact that there is already a PPA with updated Ubuntu packages should help. It will likely require somebody filing a new bug in Launchpad for each SRU request

[Ads20000]

Admittedly with snappy and Fedora I think it was Neal Gompa, someone involved with Fedora, who got in contact with Fedora about snappy first, but then Zyga, a snappy developer, introduced himself and offered his services to get it working.

I think with Flatpak and Ubuntu though, an SRU bug in Launchpad would be a good first step :)

[Ads20000]

I could also try emailing the Ubuntu Technical Board because they seemed to be in charge of allowing the special SRU method for snapd? What do people think of that? Thing is that I'd need to know that someone from Flatpak were willing to put in some work to satisfy demands by the Technical Board (as in a link I gave above, there's a fairly thorough process snapd has to go through to get SRU'd), so that my email wouldn't be in vain. Perhaps the Flatpak devs would like to email them direct?

[alexlarsson]

I don't really have much experience in ubuntu packaging, but if someone wants to do the work to do of doing a SRU that would be nice. However, given that we don't really have stable release out other than the old 0.8.x series i think it would be a bit early to look into this. Once we have a stable 0.10 release, and it is in debian unstable, then we may want to look at an SRU.

[Ads20000]

I don't either tbh, it's just something I'd like to see happen, I was hoping a Flatpak contributor would have more experience. Whoever ends up packaging for Debian Unstable may have an idea of how to get this sort of thing going? :)

[smcv]

Whoever ends up packaging for Debian Unstable

That would be me. Sorry, I don't use Ubuntu and don't have the bandwidth to maintain Flatpak there: someone who primarily uses Ubuntu will have to lead this.

[Ads20000]

@smcv Right, could you put a message here when you've got a package in Unstable and I'll try sending a message to the Ubuntu Technical Board and filing an SRU bug? :)

[jbicha]

Flatpak cannot be packaged for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS because it requires systemd which wasn't in that version of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 17.04 intentionally does not have the "latest" version of Flatpak because we stuck with the LTS 0.8 series because it was unclear when the next version would be considered LTS.

My understanding is that the next major release of Flatpak is expected soon so Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will include Flatpak 0.10. It really won't make sense to backport Flatpak 0.10 from 18.04 LTS to 17.10.

I did try to get flatpak into Ubuntu 16.04 LTS but it got stuck because it's more complicated to get brand new packages in as SRUs. (Also Ubuntu 16.04 LTS won't have the best experience since the version of the GNOME Software app in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS doesn't have Flatpak integration.)

I have done some SRUs for Flatpak on Ubuntu but

1. I honestly don't really use Flatpak or Snap yet
2. Some of the Flatpak LTS updates were rather larger than I expected for an LTS branch.
3. So basically the SRUs are a lot of work. Help would be appreciated.

Anyway, this is an Ubuntu issue, not a Flatpak one so maybe we can close this issue?

[Ads20000]

Flatpak cannot be packaged for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS because it requires systemd which wasn't in that version of Ubuntu.

Apparently it doesn't require systemd?

It really won't make sense to backport Flatpak 0.10 from 18.04 LTS to 17.10.

Except people expect latest Flatpak to run Flatpak'd apps with (since newer Flatpak'd apps often expect newer Flatpak).

Also snapd is SRU'd with every snapd release so presumably this should be possible with Flatpak? Different tech, I know, I guess there's also a manpower issue, hopefully someone with more experience than me will be able to help out...

I did try to get flatpak into Ubuntu 16.04 LTS but it got stuck because it's more complicated to get brand new packages in as SRUs.

More complicated, but doable, again see snapd's insertion into older Ubuntu releases, even 14.04!

I guess we can continue the discussion on an ubuntu-devel mailing list thread (or I'll try emailing you direct) when we need to have it :) I didn't fully realize that it's more of an Ubuntu issue, thanks for your help.

[jbicha]

You're welcome to work on packaging ostree, flatpak, etc. on 14.04 LTS if you want. Personally, it's too old for me now.

You can't backport from 18.04 LTS until 18.04 is released. Once it's released, 17.10 is only supported for ~3 months. It doesn't really make much sense to push something new there when people should really be using 18.04 LTS which should be more stable and have more bugs fixed than 17.10.

Yes, it might be possible to backport major releases as SRUs. There are a few packages like that in Ubuntu. But it needs people to work on the packaging and thorough testing.

[Ads20000]

But it needs people to work on the packaging and thorough testing.

Well yes, that is the requirement...

[alexlarsson]

Some details:

Flatpak doesn't require systemd anymore (although it does use it if its there).

Newer versions of flatpak are generally required to build stuff as the build story progresses, and the overall CLI experience and features of regular flatpak gets better. However, I try to ensure that older versions of flatpak still run new flatpaks, by backporting any changes needed for that to the 0.8.x stable series. There are few outstanding features that i will add to a 0.8.x release when 0.10 is releases, but most things should already work fine.

[alexlarsson]

For the record, rhel 7.4 also has flatpak 0.8.x.

[smcv]

could you put a message here when you've got a package in Unstable

For avoidance of doubt: I do not intend to announce new Debian packages here, or anywhere else that is not Debian - I update them as promptly as I am able to, and anything extra that I need to remember to do will just slow down the actual packaging. However, Debian's developer-facing web pages like https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/flatpak and https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/flatpak-builder provide lots of information about the packages, and keep track of the latest available flatpak and flatpak-builder in every supported suite (currently 0.8.x in stretch and jessie-backports, and 0.9.x in unstable, testing and stretch-backports). Anyone can create a Debian "guest" SSO account and subscribe to those tracker pages if they want to be kept up to date with those versions and their bug reports. The corresponding tracker pages for bubblewrap and ostree are also very relevant to this stack.

The git version control repository used for each source package is also public, and is linked from the package tracker. All Debian Developers and many other Debian contributors have commit access. If it would be useful for the developers of Ubuntu or other derivatives, they are welcome to maintain branches with DEP 14 names like ubuntu/artful in that git repository, or a clone of it elsewhere.

[Ads20000]

Apologies for my ignorance about the Debian update process and thanks for your patience and explanation :)