Announce: Flatpak 1.0.0

Alexander Larsson alexl at redhat.com
Mon Aug 20 09:59:29 UTC 2018


Changes in 1.0
==============

Flatpak 1.0 is the first version in a new stable release series. This
new 1.x series is the successor to the 0.10.x series, which was first
introduced in October 2017. 1.0 is the new standard Flatpak version,
and distributions are recommended to update to it as soon as possible.

It is available here:
 https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/releases/tag/1.0.0

Checksums:
 $ sha256sum flatpak-1.0.0.tar.xz
 e61bd01cffbbbb2ecd6a0946307987f9de795533358ba6ed7c63ce0c9f3b03e7
flatpak-1.0.0.tar.xz

The following release notes describe the major changes since
0.10.0. For a complete overview of Flatpak, please see
[docs.flatpak.org](http://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/).

## For users, app developers and distributors

Flatpak 1.0 marks a significant improvement in performance and
reliability, and includes a big collection of bug fixes. 1.0 also
includes a collection of new features, including:

 * Faster installation and updates.
 * Applications can now be marked as end-of-life. App centers and
   desktops can use this information to warn users who have an end-of-life
   version installed.
 * Permissions now use an up-front verification model: users are
   asked to confirm app permissions at install time, if an update
   requires additional permissions, the user must also confirm.
 * A new portal  allows apps to create sandboxes and restart
themselves. This allows
   applications to restart themselves after they have been updated (to
   start using the new version), and to increase sandboxing for parts
   of the application.
 * `flatpak-spawn` is a new tool for running host commands (if
   permissions allow) and creating new sandboxes from an app (this
   uses the above portals APIs).
 * Apps can now export D-Bus services for all the D-Bus names they are
   privileged to own (rather than just the application ID).
 * Flatpak's support for OCI bundles has been updated to the latest
   specification. Also, AppData can now be distributed through OCI
   repositories.
 * Host TLS certificates are now exposed to applications, using
   p11-kit-server. This removes a point of friction when accessing
   network services in some environments.
 * Apps can now request access the host SSH agent to securely access
   remote servers or Git repositories.
 * A new application permission can be used to grant access to
   Bluetooth devices.
 * A new `fallback-x11` permission grants X11 access, but only if the
   user is running in a X11 session. For applications that support
   both Wayland and X11, this can be used to ensure that the app
   doesn't have unnecessary X11 access while in Wayland, but still
   works in an X11 session.
 * Peer-to-peer installation (via USB sticks or local network) is now
   enabled and supported by default in all builds.

The Flatpak command line also introduces new commands and options, including:

 * `uninstall --unused` automatically removes unused runtimes and
   extensions (if you've removed all apps that depend on a runtime, or
   all the apps you had depending on it have upgraded to a newer
   version).
 * New `info` options, including `--show-permissions`,
   `--file-access`, `--show-location`, `--show-runtime`, `--show-sdk`.
 * `repair` - fixes broken installs by scanning for errors, removing
   invalid objects and reinstalling anything that's missing.
 * `permission-*` - allows interaction with the portals permissions
   store. This is useful for testing and for getting back to a clean
   state.
 * `create-usb` - can be used to prepare an repository to be used as a
   local updates source.

Finally, the command line has a collection of other improvements, such as:

 * If `--system` or `--user` aren't specified, one is automatically
   picked if it is obvious (or it will ask if the correct option isn't
   obvious).
 * The `install`, `update` and `uninstall` commands now ask for
   confirmation of changes before proceeding, in order to prevent
   mistakes, and to show the required application permissions.
 * The `uninstall` command now does not allow you to remove a runtime
   if some installed application requires it.
 * `flatpak remove` is now an alias for `flatpak uninstall`.

## For Linux distributors, OS and platform developers

 * Flatpak no longer requires a filesystem that supports `xattr`.
 * Portals are now more cleanly separated from Flatpak, thanks to the
   document portal and permission store having been moved to
   `xdg-desktop-portal`. It is recommended that the flatpak package has
   a weak dependency on `xdg-desktop-portal`.
 * `libflatpak` now has a transaction API for install, update and
   uninstall operations. This means that it is much easier to use as
   the basis of app centers and other graphical app management
   software.
 * Flatpak now sets several HTTP headers when installing applications,
   which make it easier for Flatpak repositories to log things like
   app download statistics and Flatpak versions in use.
 * It is now recommended that Flatpak packages add a dependency on
   p11-kit-server, as this allows apps to access host
   certificates. However, this does not need to be a hard dependency.
 * Requires bubblewrap 0.2.1 or later, and comes bundled with 0.3.0.
 * Requires OSTree 2018.7.

-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                Red Hat, Inc
       alexl at redhat.com         alexander.larsson at gmail.com


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