extra apps and locales

[Bastien Nocera]

On Thu, 2017-02-16 at 10:31 +0000, Robert McQueen wrote:
> On 16/02/17 10:16, Robert McQueen wrote:
> > > 2) Patch the binary. Easy to do if your locale path will be
> > > shorter
> > > than Debian's. Pretty sure that could be a 'sed' script.
> > 
> > /app/extra is longer than /usr - maybe we need /xtr or something?
> > :P
> 
> I was looking into the binary patching that would be needed to
> achieve 
> this, then I realised two things:
>   - various other prefix-based functionality such as plugins,
> expected 
> in /usr/lib/... are affected as well as just gettext
>   - it's not particularly trivial to tell apart the paths in the 
> binaries which are meant to be /usr because they come from the
> runtime, 
> and which are paths that come from the app so need patching to /xtr
> 
> So that leads to my next (this might be terrible) idea which is to
> add 
> support for a read-only overlay mount to bubblewrap, so in the case
> your 
> extra app has been "uprooted" from /usr you can add an invocation to 
> this flatpak to layer /app/extra on top of /usr and nobody is any
> the 
> wiser...

I really don't think that this would be as common a use as you think it
would be. All the other apps that you listed as examples in your OP
were relocatable, because proprietary apps usually are, as you don't
know where they would be installed.

For your case, I'd advise to find a binary version that's relocatable,
or prod Debian into making those for you. Seeing as this is the way
Windows reads its data files, it might even be possible in the binaries
you're using already.

I'd advise to look into those before looking to patch flatpak to add a
very fringe feature.

Cheers