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@alexlarsson alexlarsson released this 20 Aug 09:52
1.0.0
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alexlarsson Alexander Larsson
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Changes in 1.0

Flatpak 1.0 is the first version in a new stable release series. This
new 1.x series is the successor to the 0.10.x series, which was first
introduced in October 2017. 1.0 is the new standard Flatpak version,
and distributions are recommended to update to it as soon as possible.

The following release notes describe the major changes since
0.10.0. For a complete overview of Flatpak, please see
docs.flatpak.org.

For users, app developers and distributors

Flatpak 1.0 marks a significant improvement in performance and
reliability, and includes a big collection of bug fixes. 1.0 also
includes a collection of new features, including:

  • Faster installation and updates.
  • Applications can now be marked as end-of-life. App centers and
    desktops can use this information to warn users who have an end-of-life
    version installed.
  • Permissions now use an up-front verification model: users are
    asked to confirm app permissions at install time, if an update
    requires additional permissions, the user must also confirm.
  • A new portal
    allows apps to create sandboxes and restart themselves. This allows
    applications to restart themselves after they have been updated (to
    start using the new version), and to increase sandboxing for parts
    of the application.
  • flatpak-spawn is a new tool for running host commands (if
    permissions allow) and creating new sandboxes from an app (this
    uses the above portals APIs).
  • Apps can now export D-Bus services for all the D-Bus names they are
    privileged to own (rather than just the application ID).
  • Flatpak's support for OCI bundles has been updated to the latest
    specification. Also, AppData can now be distributed through OCI
    repositories.
  • Host TLS certificates are now exposed to applications, using
    p11-kit-server. This removes a point of friction when accessing
    network services in some environments.
  • Apps can now request access the host SSH agent to securely access
    remote servers or Git repositories.
  • A new application permission can be used to grant access to
    Bluetooth devices.
  • A new fallback-x11 permission grants X11 access, but only if the
    user is running in a X11 session. For applications that support
    both Wayland and X11, this can be used to ensure that the app
    doesn't have unnecessary X11 access while in Wayland, but still
    works in an X11 session.
  • Peer-to-peer installation (via USB sticks or local network) is now
    enabled and supported by default in all builds.

The Flatpak command line also introduces new commands and options, including:

  • uninstall --unused automatically removes unused runtimes and
    extensions (if you've removed all apps that depend on a runtime, or
    all the apps you had depending on it have upgraded to a newer
    version).
  • New info options, including --show-permissions,
    --file-access, --show-location, --show-runtime, --show-sdk.
  • repair - fixes broken installs by scanning for errors, removing
    invalid objects and reinstalling anything that's missing.
  • permission-* - allows interaction with the portals permissions
    store. This is useful for testing and for getting back to a clean
    state.
  • create-usb - can be used to prepare an repository to be used as a
    local updates source.

Finally, the command line has a collection of other improvements, such as:

  • If --system or --user aren't specified, one is automatically
    picked if it is obvious (or it will ask if the correct option isn't
    obvious).
  • The install, update and uninstall commands now ask for
    confirmation of changes before proceeding, in order to prevent
    mistakes, and to show the required application permissions.
  • The uninstall command now does not allow you to remove a runtime
    if some installed application requires it.
  • flatpak remove is now an alias for flatpak uninstall.

For Linux distributors, OS and platform developers

  • Flatpak no longer requires a filesystem that supports xattr.
  • Portals are now more cleanly separated from Flatpak, thanks to the
    document portal and permission store having been moved to
    xdg-desktop-portal. It is recommended that the flatpak package has
    a weak dependency on xdg-desktop-portal.
  • libflatpak now has a transaction API for install, update and
    uninstall operations. This means that it is much easier to use as
    the basis of app centers and other graphical app management
    software.
  • Flatpak now sets several HTTP headers when installing applications,
    which make it easier for Flatpak repositories to log things like
    app download statistics and Flatpak versions in use.
  • It is now recommended that Flatpak packages add a dependency on
    p11-kit-server, as this allows apps to access host
    certificates. However, this does not need to be a hard dependency.
  • Requires bubblewrap 0.2.1 or later, and comes bundled with 0.3.0.
  • Requires OSTree 2018.7.
$ sha256sum flatpak-1.0.0.tar.xz 
e61bd01cffbbbb2ecd6a0946307987f9de795533358ba6ed7c63ce0c9f3b03e7  flatpak-1.0.0.tar.xz
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