Removal from the Inkscape Website · Issue #87 · flathub/org.inkscape.Inkscape
github.com
The inkscape project is considering removing the flatpak format from the website's resources/downloads pages because of lack of maintenance. There is no maintainer of the flatpak/flathub format at ...

The Flatpak is already packaged and works well. It just needs to be maintained from a person that joins the Inkscape community.

This would allow further improvements like Portal support and making the app official on Flathub.

  • @bigmclargehuge
    4•4 days ago

    (Not incredibly educated on Flatpaks, please educate me if I’m wrong) My main issue with Flatpak is the bundled dependancies. I really prefer packages to come bundled with the absolute bare minimum, as part of the main appeal of Linux for me is the shared system wide dependancies. Flatpak sort of seems to throw that ideology out the window.

    Let me ask this (genuinely asking, I’m not a software developer and I’m curious why this isn’t a common practice), why aren’t “portable” builds of software more common? Ie, just a folder with the executable that you can run from anywhere? Would these in theory also need to come bundled with any needed dependancies? Or could they simply be told to seek out the ones already installed on the system? Or would this just depend on the software?

    I ask this because in my mind, a portable build of a piece of software seems like the perfect middle ground between a native, distro specific build and a specialized universal packaging method like Flatpak.

    • @[email protected]English
      3•4 days ago

      well, the point of flatpak is to have bundled dependencies so they run predictably no matter the distro

      if one of your software’s dependency gets updated, and your software isn’t, you may run into issues - like a function from the library you’re using getting removed, or its behaviour changing slightly. and some distros may also apply patches to some of their library that breaks stuff too!
      often, with complex libraries, even when you check the version number, you may have behavioural differences between distros depending on the compile flags used (i.e. some features being disabled, etc.)
      so, while in theory portable builds work, for them to be practical, they most often are statically linked (all the dependencies get built into the executable - no relying on system libraries). and that comes with a huge size penalty, even when compared to flatpaks, as those do have some shared dependencies between flatpaks! you can for example request to depend on a specific version of the freedesktop SDK, which will provide you with a bunch of standard linux tools, and that’ll only get installed once for every package you have that uses it