option to download bundles from flathub

[Alexander Larsson]

On Thu, 2017-08-24 at 09:26 -0300, Fabio Rafael Rosa wrote:
> Hi all.
>  From what I could figure out (and correct me if Im wrong), the
> prefered 
> way to distribute flatpaks, is to give the user a flatpakref file,
> that 
> will download and install the app and required runtimes when we do 
> flatpak install.
> But, I never see a way to download the whole bundle (except for 
> libreoffice, for example).
> Will flathub have an option for that. For example, I search for an
> app 
> at flathub website, and can download the whole bundle , so I can
> install 
> it offline ?
> I do understand that , doing the whole thing online makes a lot of 
> sense, but, offline install is a scenario that, despite being
> supported 
> by flatpak, seems deeply ignored (no flatpak app from flatpak.org
> have a 
> option to download the bundle instead of the flatpakref). Offline 
> machines, o bad connections, are still a reality in several places, 
> unfortunatelly.

We're not generating bundle files, because in the long run I don't
think they are very important. However, you should be able to generate
your own from the flathub repo using "flatpak build-bundle" after
having downloaded it. You could easily create a script that does it.

Also, in master there is work on a peer-2-peer mode that lets you
download from locally available repos too, via avahi or from a usb
stick. This is work that endless is sponsoring for supporting flatpak
updates when the network is slow/flaky/expensive.

-- 
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 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
       alexl at redhat.com            alexander.larsson at gmail.com 
He's an immortal alcoholic paranormal investigator She's a strong-willed 
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