[Librem-5-dev] applications using native debs

[rinigus]

On Fri, May 24, 2019 at 10:44 PM David Boddie via Librem-5-dev <
librem-5-dev at lists.community.puri.sm> wrote:

> On Fri, 24 May 2019 20:57:11 +0300, rinigus wrote:
>
> > while Flatpak would probably work for most of the applications, we may
> need
> > once in a while to build applications with DEBs for L5. Examples include
> > testing, distribution of applications that are not matching Flatpak
> > restrictions, and maybe some other reasons. Right now, I am looking for
> it
> > to be able to distribute maps software for testing and distinguish issues
> > coming from flatpak packaging - something I cannot rule out.
>
> What kind of issues are you thinking of?
>

Its probably paranoia, but the thought is as follows. Flatpaks are build
using some configuration settings - in my case at Flathub - that may not
reflect fully hardware on which they run. In particular, I don't know how
much of hardware-specific libs are used in such components like graphical
stack (hw acceleration, for example). On PCs, we do have these nvidia
flatpak packages, for example. On ARM, I don't know how much we do and how
well L5 devkit is matched. But it maybe paranoia on my side induced by a
lack of knowledge.

As for other reasons for DEBs (daemons, probably some other cases), there
are probably several cases where flatpak is just not the best way for
approaching it.


> > I wonder whether we have any kind of build system that can be used now
> for
> > building "extra" deb packages that could run on L5/devkit? For Sailfish,
> we
> > have OBS that allows to compile complicated projects and distribute them
> > through its internal repositories.
>
> I don't know much about the Sailfish ecosystem, though I have heard of OBS.
> What kind of QA procedure is in place around this distribution system to
> ensure that the packages that get built are trusted? Do they become
> officially
> "blessed" packages, or is it just a convenient way of running the package
> building process to make third party packages for unofficial distribution
> or
> sideloading, like Personal Package Archives (PPA) with Ubuntu?
>

Good questions and there are things to learn from SFOS. On my side, I know
very little about PPA (from developer's side) and had to look up how it
works for developers. But let me reply to the questions one by one.

On SFOS, there is an official store and packages in that store are blessed.
The most of the restrictions are formulated via APIs that are allowed in
the store. These APIs are checked for automatically when you upload your
app. Next, app is checked manually by some officials in the store and only
then released. What is done by that official and what is exactly is
checked, I don't know. If something fails, you are told about it and you
can resubmit new version. Such scheme works for closed- and open-sourced
software and all work is done on compiled versions - whether by OBS or
using SDK on PC.

Decent amount of software is distributed via alternative channels, mainly
via OpenRepos. Compared to the official store, its a proper wild west.
There are no checks, developers get their personal repositories (think of
it as PPAs), developers can upload whatever they wish (could be taken down
for copyright reasons), and all seems to work on trust. And, in my
experience, this presence of trust works quite well for Sailfish. Community
is small and if you release a decent software you start to build up the
trust as well.

Now OBS is very handy when you have to do something complicated and, in a
way, it can be used to give some credibility to your packages and
repositories. For mapping software, with large amount of components, its
way easier to make your own repository and build the end-product that
relies on some exotic libraries. In my case, its
https://build.merproject.org/project/show/home:rinigus:maps . If I change
any of the packages, I can easily initiate rebuild as required to get the
final result for different architectures and Sailfish versions. From PPA
description, it seems to be similar to OBS. In practice, OBS is used by
applications that are relatively complicated, by ports of SFOS to
unofficial devices, and for extending / testing the core OS components.

As you can imagine, I would be happy to get something like OBS for L5. How
to hook it with QA procedures, that's another story. In some respect,
having a documented build (if used for open-sourced project), is a good
start for QA as well.

Sorry for long post.

Cheers,

Rinigus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.community.puri.sm/pipermail/librem-5-dev/attachments/20190525/8e326a9f/attachment.html>