The Story

The Process

Detect and parse the manifest

• JSON or YAML files
• Conforms to Flatpak Builder scheme
• Contains at least the id and modules attributes

Check if the required SDKs are installed

• Ideally offer to install them for the user
• Complexity of handling --user and --system installations

						flatpak list --runtime --columns=application,branch
					

Initialize the Flatpak repository

						flatpak build-init $repoDir $appID $SDK \
				$runtime $runtimeVersion
					

Update and build dependencies

• Assume the latest module is the application
• Make use of --stop-at=$module
• Allow to run any time once the repo is initialized

						# Update dependencies
flatpak-builder --stop-at=$module --download-only \
	--ccache --force-clean --state-dir=$stateDir \
	$repoDir $manifestPath
	# Build dependencies
flatpak-builder --stop-at=$module --build-only \
	--ccache --force-clean --state-dir=$stateDir \
	--disable-download --keep-build-dirs \
	$repoDir $manifestPath
					

Build the application

• Buildsystem dependant
• Handling $PATH / LD_LIBRARY_PATH / PKG_CONFIG_PATH
• Handling the manifest and module's build-options
• Post install

Run the application

• Make sure to skip --metadata from finish-args

						flatpak build --with-appdir --allow=devel \
	--talk-name=org.freedesktop.portal.* \
	--talk-name=org.a11y.Bus \
	$finishArgs \
	$repoDir $commandToRun
					

Edge cases

Sandboxed IDE

• Use flatpak-spawn for running flatpak/flatpak-builder on the host
• Use org.flatpak.Builder Flatpak if installed, especially on OSTree based OSs

Ensure the documents portal is running

Mounting fonts

Proxying host environment variables

Proxying the accessibility bus

Bonus points

Integrate the SDK extensions

• Running Language service providers, ...etc
• Avoids having to install anything on the host

Runtime terminal

Build terminal

Export as a bundle

Examples

GNOME Builder

• The best container-integrated IDE
• Smooth integration with the LSP using SDK extensions

Flatpak VSCode

• Inspired by GNOME Builder
• Integrates with other VSCode extensions like rust-analyzer, meson, vala

fenv

• Inspired by Flatpak VSCode
• CLI friendly
• Still on a beta phase

Open questions

Handle a lot of corner cases

Duplicate parts of flatpak-builder for building the application

Duplicate parts of flatpak for running the application

Potential solutions

• libflatpak-builder maybe?
• Simpler CLI wrapper that various IDEs could make use of