Are packages installed via toolbox visible for the host?

Silverblue docs are not so clear about that.
Here’s a situation I encountered. I wanted to install GitHub - oae/gnome-shell-pano: Next-gen Clipboard Manager for Gnome Shell. It requires libgda libgda-sqlite dependencies to be installed. The project’s README advises to use sudo dnf install ... to install these dependencies.

How should I do it ideally on Silverblue?
Could I just install these dependencies via toolbox and they would be discovered by the extension?
Or, do I need to install it via rpm-ostree?

You would use rpm-ostree to layer those packages, you should do an rpm-ostree update prior to doing any layering to ensure you are at the latest with whatever you already have installed, including default setup. You should also check whether gnome-shell-pano is already installed, or packaged in fedora repos before you begin going down the layering extra “required packages”.

BTW: Welcome to :fedora: !

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Thanks @jakfrost. Alright, I installed these packages as a layer with rpm-ostree.

In general, I find it a bit difficult to understand which packages should be installed with rpm-ostree, and which I should install via toolbox.
Some of the points that I find confusing:

  • VPN software (Cisco AnyConnect) - I kinda feel it should go as a layer via rpm-ostree, but it would be awesome to have some advice on it in the docs
  • The docs say that “Most (but not all) RPM packages provided by Fedora can be installed on Fedora Silverblue using this method.”. It would be great to have some clarification on what kind of packages would not be installable, like some examples. For new users of Silverblue, like me, it adds some uncertainty.
  • toolbox adds that purple thing in the shell to let you know that you’re in toolbox. I believe it actually should be configured the other way around. Normally, you should be doing most of the things inside of your toolboxes, as I understand. On the host, you would only run some host-related commands, like rpm-ostree. The purple shape looks like a warning - it should appear when you’re invoking commands on the host. For my day-to-day console prompt, I don’t really want to see that purple orb. Of course I know that I could change it the way I like, I just think the default configuration is not great
  • The docs lists fish as an example of a thing you’d install with rpm-ostree. I think it requires some more explanation. Let’s assume your favorite shell is fish. I believe you should install it both on the host (via rpm-ostree) and in your toolbox container. Since you will work in both of these environments (more often in the toolbox ideally), you should have the fish shell in both of them. Since /home is shared between the host and toolbox, you’d have just one copy of fish configuration in your home dir. Is my understanding correct?
  • are things that I install on the host available in a toolbox? And the other way around, are things installed in the toolbox available on the host? I think the docs should be more explicit about it. There’s just a small bit about flatpak-spawn there.
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