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Markdown
77 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
<p align="center">
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<img src="https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/blob/master/flatpak.png?raw=true" alt="Flatpak icon"/>
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</p>
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Flatpak is a system for building, distributing, and running sandboxed
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desktop applications on Linux.
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See https://flatpak.org/ for more information.
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Community discussion happens in [#flatpak on Freenode](ircs://chat.freenode.net/flatpak) and on [the mailing list](https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/flatpak).
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Read documentation for the flatpak [commandline tools](http://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/flatpak-command-reference.html) and for the libflatpak [library API](http://flatpak.github.io/flatpak/reference/html/index.html).
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# Contributing
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Flatpak welcomes contributions from anyone! Here are some ways you can help:
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* Fix [one of the issues](https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/) and submit a PR
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* Update flatpak's translations and submit a PR
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* Update flatpak's documentation, hosted at http://docs.flatpak.org and developed over in [flatpak-docs](https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak-docs)
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* Find a bug and [submit a detailed report](https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/new) including your OS, flatpak version, and the steps to reproduce
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* Add your favorite application to [Flathub](https://flathub.org) by writing a flatpak-builder manifest and [submitting it](https://github.com/flathub/flathub/wiki/App-Submission)
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* Improve the Flatpak support in your favorite Linux distribution
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# Hacking
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Flatpak uses a traditional autoconf-style build mechanism. To build just do
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```
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./configure [args]
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make
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make install
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```
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Most configure arguments are documented in `./configure --help`. However,
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there are some options that are a bit more complicated.
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Flatpak relies on a project called
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[Bubblewrap](https://github.com/projectatomic/bubblewrap) for the
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low-level sandboxing. By default, an in-tree copy of this is built
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(distributed in the tarball or using git submodules in the git
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tree). This will build a helper called flatpak-bwrap. If your system
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has a recent enough version of Bubblewrap already, you can use
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`--with-system-bubblewrap` to use that instead.
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Bubblewrap can run in two modes, either using unprivileged user
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namespaces or setuid mode. This requires that the kernel supports this,
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which some distributions disable. For instance, Debian and Arch
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([linux](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=linux) kernel v4.14.5 or later), support user namespaces with the `kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone` sysctl enabled.
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If unprivileged user namespaces are not available, then Bubblewrap must
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be built as setuid root. This is believed to be safe, as it is
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designed to do this. Any build of Bubblewrap supports both
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unprivileged and setuid mode, you just need to set the setuid bit for
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it to change mode.
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However, this does complicate the installation a bit. If you pass
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`--with-priv-mode=setuid` to configure (of Flatpak or Bubblewrap) then
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`make install` will try to set the setuid bit. However that means you
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have to run `make install` as root. Alternatively, you can pass
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`--enable-sudo` to configure and it will call `sudo` when setting the
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setuid bit. Alternatively you can enable setuid completely outside of
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the installation, which is common for example when packaging Bubblewrap
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in a .deb or .rpm.
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There are some complications when building Flatpak to a different
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prefix than the system-installed version. First of all, the newly
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built Flatpak will look for system-installed flatpaks in
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`$PREFIX/var/lib/flatpak`, which will not match existing installed
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flatpaks. You can use `--with-system-install-dir=/var/lib/flatpak`
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to make both installations use the same location.
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Secondly, Flatpak ships with a root-privileged policykit helper for
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system-installation, called `flatpak-system-helper`. This is dbus
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activated (on the system-bus) and if you install in a non-standard
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location it is likely that this will not be found by dbus and
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policykit. However, if the system installation is synchronized,
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you can often use the system installed helper instead - at least
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if the two versions are close in versions.
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