I have made a new Gtk 3 app and I would like to know what are the options and requirements for an app to be included in the Software app so to be available to Fedora users?
At the moment I have the app as .tar.gz and published on one of my pages.
Here is some more context:
I am an app developer with more than 60 apps for available on Mac OS, iOS, Windows and Android. I am working in barcode scaning SDK, encryption, sound processing, camera effects and audio effects.
I would like to expand some of my work to some Linux distros and what I like most is at the moment is Fedora and Pop! OS so I have made my File encryption app with Gtk 3 (Gtk 4 was not available on all my target distros).
I do not want to use FlatHub because I do not like the sandboxing on Linus - it is turning it to Mac which makes no sense to me.
For me this is like a test to decide if it is worth making my apps for Linux.
So I was told to ask the creators of Fedora and Pop! OS directly and I ended asking here…
I don’t know who told you to do that, but the easiest option would simply to be provide copies of your already existing apps in Linux package formats. Two of the most popular being *.rpm, which Fedora, OpenSuSE and derivatives use, and *.deb which Debian and derivatives use. *.tar.gz is usually kept for source code or binaries.
Your software doesn’t appear in the “Software App” unless a specific distro packages it for their repositories. That means joining the packaging team of whatever distro you want your software in, and doing the job of packaging said software yourself for that particular distro. Or a third party comes across your package and decides it’s neat enough that they’ll do the packaging for it themselves. Or an existing packaging team member comes across your software and packages it. If your software isn’t open source, it’s not being packaged for the majority of distros.
There are personal repositories within projects where you can do the packaging yourself. On Arch it’s called the AUR, Fedora has COPR, Ubuntu has PPA.
Thank you.
However I am still hoping to get answers from someone officially involved in Fedora decisions making.
It is easy for users to ask developers do more things and to require free apps with free code but our work and our time is not a joke.
So I need official and clear answers to help me decide if making my apps functional on some Linux distros will be a valuable effort or waste of time.
I think such information should be on available and accessible from the main page of Fedora Project so more developers can jump on board.
In regards to this point, you may want to look at something like the Open Build Service which makes packages of your software for the major multiple distributions and multiple architectures.
It is. If you go to the Fedora Project page, in the menu buttons along the top, hover over Contributors and there is a bunch of menus you can choose from. New Contributors gives you a link to the Join SIG documentation. Contributer Guides shows you the Packaging Guidelines documentation.
Every distribution will have a similar process which you will have to go through for every distribution you want your software on. The easiest methods otherwise, is a personal repo (AUR, COPR, PPA), Flathub (but you’ve ruled that out) or OBS and hosting the various packages on your own website.
It’s going to be a ton of work to get an app in all the repos for all the distros. I wish you wouldn’t rule out Flatpak. Having it on Flathub makes it immediately available to all (most?) distros and is the preferred method for all the atomic distros. You put it on one place and everyone can use it.
In my vew Flatpak is a trap. In reality sandboxing is a lib and their code is running with every single app using it. They are positioned as a middle man. Restricting the apps and controlling the app visibility and access to potential users, while their code is nor restricted and always running. Such kind of monopoly is something I hope to avoid with Linux. Security concerns could easily lead both users and developers into a prison just look what Cloudflare is doing to the internet
Go to chat.fedoraproject.org (Fedora’s Matrix server) and find the devel channel. The developers there will help you to build a Copr repo or get your software directly in testing.
Chances are that you will have to maintain the packages until you find co-maintainers.
It is a bit of a learning curve but with your skills I don’t think it will take long.
Containerisation does not work as you seem to think.
It’s built on linux kernel features to isolate the container contents at the direction of the developer. Flatpak is just one of the tools that uses this technology.
Another example is systemd that uses the same technology to limit the resources that services can access.
I am also a macOS user and developer and do not see any issues with the containerisation that macOS does for Apps. It’s making my mac less susceptable to damage from app problems.
