where should I put my config file?

Goffi goffi at goffi.org
Wed Aug 8 06:58:30 UTC 2018


Le mardi 7 août 2018 16:00:45 CEST, vous avez écrit :
> On Tue, Aug 7, 2018 at 12:03 PM Goffi <goffi at goffi.org> wrote:
> >
> > Le mardi 7 août 2018, 11:51:48 CEST Alexander Larsson a écrit :
> > > Creating a runtime is basically like creating your own distribution.
> > > It is not a good idea to maintain a distribution just so you can read
> > > a config file.
> > >
> > > Please please please, unless you have the real manpower/interest in
> > > doing it correctly, never ever create your own runtime.
> > >
> > > If all you need to do is read a config file that can never change,
> > > just put it in /app/etc/.
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > no it's not just for a config file of course. It's because I have a backend and many frontends (each one in a different flatpak), and all the frontends need to access some backend modules (it's Python), its dependencies and media files. Runtime allow to have a common base, and to not duplicate module and media files for each package.
> >
> > My runtime is just the Freedesktop one with my additional modules, and I'll have to maintain the modules up to date in any case, it doesn't looks like that much work (regarding that I can automatize modules update), am I missing something? You can check my manifests at https://repos.goffi.org/sat_docs/file/tip/flatpak the runtime is at https://repos.goffi.org/sat_docs/file/tip/flatpak/org.salutatoi.Sdk.json .
> 
> Flatpak is a bundling system, the main idea is that apps ship what
> they need, and the split into runtimes is not to avoid duplication,
> but to share the workload of maintaining the base.
> If the shared thing is only some python modules, your runtimes are not
> using less space than if you just put those in each app anyway. Due to
> the way flatpak uses ostree those files will all be de-duplicated
> automatically anyway.
> 
> The problem with doing your own runtime, even if its based on another
> one, is that you suddenly have to keep up-to-date with the base. Say
> we do a security or bugfix update, suddenly all the diverged runtimes
> will not get that fix. Furthermore, once you've diverged you're not
> sharing space with the new runtime build, so the on-disk size grows.
> 
> If the building is painful i would recommend you to look at "base
> apps". Its the same idea as with the "base runtimes", but you build
> one app and then you start from that multiple times and build
> "derived" apps.

I see, thanks for your meaningful explanations, I'll see how to rework my manifests to avoid a custom runtime as soon as I find some time.

Goffi




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