Flathub package

[Akselmo]

Hello! To make this browser easier to use and install on Linux, making it distributed as a Flatpak on Flathub would be great.

I can try to help with that if needed.

[RobertCraigie]

I'm not very familiar with Flathub myself so any help here would be greatly appreciated!

I think the biggest help would be to get the initial flatpak build setup, maybe we could take inspiration from Zen, if they have a good setup? https://github.com/zen-browser/flatpak/

[Akselmo]

Good idea. We then also need to replicate this https://github.com/flathub/app.zen_browser.zen

Here's a submission guide for reading: https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/submission

I have done this with only one app, so I am not a pro at all, but I could try tinkering on this on the weekend.

[Akselmo]

Good news, I managed to use the Zen-browser flatpak setup to build and run Glide inside flatpak locally.

I'll clean these up from any Zen related things and make repos for them when I can.

[RobertCraigie]

Oh that is amazing news, thank you!

[thomascft]

I have a working manifest, metainfo file, and a desktop file adapted from the Firefox Flatpak build in case you need any of those.
https://github.com/thomascft/glide-flatpak

Firefox uses its own in-house tool to build and push Flatpaks to FlatHub directly. Much of their process including the final permissions given to the official Flatpak can be found in this Python file. I tried to adapt the upstream build to work with the Flatpak builder. This resulted in a manifest that closely aligns with what Zen uses.

While writing a desktop entry for Glide I wasn't able to find the project logo as an svg anywhere. For the time being, the Flatpak build process copies the static pngs bundled with the build to the proper locations.

[RobertCraigie]

I'll drop those screenshots into an assets folder under the glide-browser/flatpak repository and tag a release if that's okay with you.

sounds good to me, thanks so much for your continued help here!

[RobertCraigie]

@thomascft FYI I force pushed over your merge commit flathub/flathub#7021 (comment)

[RobertCraigie]

@thomascft looks like we might need a separate patch for the org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.firefox.* dbus name? flathub/flathub#7021 (comment)

[RobertCraigie]

@thomascft still no response from the flathub maintainer :/ any ideas on what we can do?

[thomascft]

@RobertCraigie

looks like we might need a separate patch for the org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.firefox.* dbus name? flathub/flathub#7021 (comment)

I don't remember if we talked about this over IRC, but afaik there aren't any other forks that patch that bus name. (LibreWolf leaves it alone surprisingly)

still no response from the flathub maintainer :/ any ideas on what we can do?

You could reach out on the Flathub Matrix channel.