[Users] Fw: Re: Consider packaging claws-mail as flatpak distributable?

[Danny van Heumen]

Accidentally sent to individual i.s.o. list. Not having my day ... :-P

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Monday, September 2, 2019 4:09 PM, Danny van Heumen <danny at dannyvanheumen.nl> wrote:

> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> On Monday, September 2, 2019 3:57 PM, Michal Suchánek msuchanek at suse.de wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 27 Aug 2019 19:38:28 +0200
> > Danny van Heumen danny at dannyvanheumen.nl wrote:
> >
> > > I'm sorry to hear that.
> > > Is there any way I can help with this? I'm not guaranteeing anything
> > > yet, but I would be interested to look into it. However, I am not
> > > familiar with building claws-mail etc. at all.
> > > What I am thinking is, I suspect there is a single "recipe" that should
> > > be maintained. Maybe I can see if we can write the "recipe" once and
> > > see if we can take it up as part of the build process?
> > > Do you have something like a build process right now?
> > > If so, would you be able to give some assistance in case of questions?
> > > Actually, come to think about it. The Flatpak solution might be more
> > > attractive in the long run as it covers a larger number of distros.
> > > (That is, assuming that flatpak and similar packaging formats won't
> > > fail miserably.)
> >
> > It is already failing miserably form security perspective. If all GTK
> > applications share the GTK library and it has a security issue you fix
> > it once and all your GTK applications are fixed.
>
> I agree with this. The argumentation would be similar as in the discussion of statically vs. dynamically compiled binaries, although on a larger scale.
>
> I wouldn't claim this packaging format solves all issues. There is a trade-off. Flatpak trades of more isolation, control over dependencies, and the ability to install without needing modification to the base OS image.
>
> Please note that I have no intention for this packaging format to replace any other format. My intention is simply to offer this as a new alternative installation option.
>
> > With Flatpak if you install 20 GTK applications you get 20 copies of
> > GTK (and its image loades, font libraries, and whatnot). Every time an
> > issue is found packager of each and every Flatpak application needs to
> > apply a fix to the bundled libraries the application depends on.
> > This does not scale very well. It takes up a lot of disk space, too.
>
> I would argue that this is only partially true. The selected base image`org.gnome.Platform` and very common shared libraries, are maintained independently. We would need to update the manifest, that is true. However, only one maintainer needs to make the base image or shared library available.
>
> It is not ideal, but it does offer possibilities for distributions with an immutable root filesystem / base image.
>
> Regards,
> Danny
>
> PS: I'm happy to discuss more details, but will need to look into the specifics. Let me know what further questions/concerns there are. Also, please indicate if certain issues are considered "deal-breaking".