Flatpak/appimage/Snap etc.

[Hasshu]

https://flatpak.org/

I wonder if it would be more feasible than the AppImage format (#4056).

[wiiaboo]

See #4056.
Wait, you already mentioned it. But probably not, even if releases are eventually automated.

flathub/flathub#1057

[Hasshu]

@Khyber3737 One of the main points of Flatpak, in my opinion, is the possibility to get installable software directly from the developer. I do not — and should not — trust some third-party "Flathub maintainers", hence this here issue.

Or were you referring to #2987?

Like with AppImage, I don't think we want to maintain such a package. It requires time and care, and we'd have to handle all the bug reports too. Either someone of "us" needs to step in (but nobody seems to be interested in picking up such a task), or someone external has to do it.

In addition, it seems all the GPU API usage (especially hwdec) makes this tricky.

This issue is hereby about all "distro-independent" packaging methods for Linux, since this comes up every so often.

[eszlari]

I would like to help you with the flatpak. After the build manifest is written and tested, the ongoing maintenance burden should be low: in the most simple case, it means just updating the URL and SHA256 of the tarball for a new release through the Github UI.

Flathub uses buildbot (https://flathub.org/builds). Builds get triggered automatically when committing to the master branch at Flathub or when opening PRs. Preview release/beta builds are also supported.

So if you are interested, I can write the manifest and submit a PR to Flathub. Then mpv developers would get commit access to the repo with mpv's manifest.

Just to two things need to be decided:

1. What should be the app ID (reverse DNS)? io.mpv.mpv?
2. manifest format: JSON or YAML?

Well, nice.

If the thing gets built in a transparent and public way, all the better I guess.

I hope this doesn't require any metadata or similar in the mpv repo itself?

What should be the app ID (reverse DNS)? io.mpv.mpv?

Well, we currently own the domain (or rather one of the developers does), so I guess that's OK.

[Akemi]

https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/TOOLS/osxbundle/mpv.app/Contents/Info.plist#L179-L180
io.mpv is what the mpv macOS bundle uses.

[eszlari]

I hope this doesn't require any metadata or similar in the mpv repo itself?

The single (small) metadata file, that is needed, could be put in either repo. But since it's not specific to flatpak, it would make more sense (and preferred by Flathub) to be put in the upstream repo. Software managers like GNOME Software or KDE Discover use it to display infos about an app, no matter if they are packaged as flatpak or traditional Linux packages formats.

io.mpv is what the mpv macOS bundle uses.

It needs to have 3 elements, e.g.
io.mpv.mpv
io.mpv.MPV
io.mpv.Player
etc.