Central list of Flatpak repositories?

[Alexander Larsson]

On Sat, 2017-08-19 at 16:15 +0200, Sébastien Wilmet wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> As far as I understand, Flathub is a central *repository* (or split
> into
> a free and non-free repositories).
> 
> It's great that Flathub provides hosting, but it would be better to
> keep
> Flatpak decentralized/distributed.
> 
> To be able to discover all Flatpak apps from a software center like
> gnome-software, what is just needed is a central *list* of
> repositories.
> For example an XML file listing known repositories.
> 
> Has this idea already been discussed?

Well, there is the list of apps/repos on the website. However, that is
clearly not the kind of list you mean. What you're talking about is an
automatic, machine parseable list. 

I'm don't think this is a great idea. It is just another way to make a
centralized system, but one that doesn't have important features. 

I can see two ways such a thing could be done. Either one can be very
very careful about what is put on the list, with careful review of
everything and hard rules about how the repos should work. This is
really is just a way to reproduce flathub with multiple actual repos.

The other way is to be very inclusive and add everyone who asks.
However, then you can have zero trust in anything that comes from this.
Anyone could put malicious forks, trojans or just poorly maintained
repos to it, putting all users at risk.

There has been some discussions in allowing (e.g.) the flathub repo to
"contain" an app in another repo (a form of redirect), in case some
upstream has an official repo which the flathub organization has enough
trust in. This would essentially implement the first approach above.
However these were just loose discussions, there is no code that
supports this.

-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
       alexl at redhat.com            alexander.larsson at gmail.com 
He's an unconventional albino paramedic from the Mississippi delta. She's 
a high-kicking Bolivian single mother with a flame-thrower. They fight 
crime!