Comment 0 for bug 1656712

Revision history for this message
Jeremy BĂ­cha (jbicha) wrote : Update flatpak and friends to 0.8

Impact
======
Flatpak 0.8 is a new LTS release of the alternative package set.

https://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2016/12/22/a-stable-base-for-flatpak-0-8/

This update includes these components for 16.04 LTS and 16.10:
- flatpak 0.8.0
- ostree 2016.15
- bubblewrap 0.1.5 (already in Ubuntu 16.10)
- xdg-desktop-portal 0.4
- xdg-desktop-portal-gtk 0.3 (already in Ubuntu 16.10)

This basically matches the set that is also available in Debian's upcoming new stable release. All of these source packages are new to 16.04 LTS.

Test Case
=========
1. Install an app with the old syntax
sudo apt install flatpak
wget https://people.gnome.org/~alexl/keys/gnome-sdk.gpg
flatpak remote-add --user --gpg-import=gnome-sdk.gpg gnome http://sdk.gnome.org/repo/
flatpak --user install gnome org.gnome.Platform 3.22
flatpak --user remote-add --gpg-import=gnome-sdk.gpg gnome-apps http://sdk.gnome.org/repo-apps/
flatpak --user install gnome-apps org.gnome.Clocks stable

2. Install an app with the new syntax
flatpak remote-add --from gnome https://sdk.gnome.org/gnome.flatpakrepo
flatpak remote-add --from gnome-apps https://sdk.gnome.org/gnome-apps.flatpakrepo
flatpak install gnome-apps org.gnome.gedit
flatpak run org.gnome.gedit

Regression Potential
====================
There's no regression for Ubuntu 16.04 since these are new packages there that should have no affect on other packages.

For 16.10, this has an inherent regression. The command-line syntax changed in 0.6.13. However, since virtually all of the guides to using Flatpak including http://flatpak.org/apps use the new syntax that will not work with 16.10's older flatpak, it seems better for users to get used to the new syntax.

Other Info
==========
Just like snap was backported to 14.04 LTS to -updates, this is being backported to 16.04 LTS -updates. Both snap and Flatpak are useful for people who want to run new apps on an LTS operating system.

Flatpak is not easily backportable to 14.04 LTS.