[Libreoffice-qa] minutes of ESC call ...

[Christian Lohmaier]

Hi Jay, *,

On Fri, Jun 9, 2017 at 1:10 AM, Jay Philips <philipz85 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> […]
>>      + unclear what the future holds here: Snap, FlatPack, AppImage (Michael)
>
> If its Libreoffice future, i believe AppImage will be it, as it provides similar functionality as the portable version found on windows, like
>
> 1) not having to install it on your system to run it (aka portable)

No need to install for TDF builds either.

> 2) copying it on a usb and run it on any linux distro (atleast the minimum system that LO supports, something that snap and flatpak cant do)

can do that with the TDF builds as well.

> 3) easily running multiple versions (would improve linux QA, as it would also lower that barrier for users to test old versions)

can do that with the TDF builds as well.

>>      + no real need for Linux portable edition (Cloph)
>>         + tar-ball can be unzipped.
>
> This is fine for advanced linux users but not for basic linux users, including those from windows or mac. The tar-ball doesnt even come with a simple extract or install bash script,

Not true, there's and install script that could be used, but even t
hat is not necessary since you can simply extract the packages
themselves.

for i in *rpm; do rpm2cpio $i | cpio -idmv ; done

with appimage you'd also have to use the console/terminal/whatever to
make it executable for example, so whether you have instructions that
read "run chmod +x <file-you-donwloaded>" or tell them to run any
other command/one-liner for that matter doesn't really make a
difference im my book.

>>      + some people may want it do why not ? (Heiko)
>>         + up-loading takes time, maintenance etc. (Cloph)
>
> The .tar.gz to .appimage bash conversion script can be run directly on the webserver, so that would eliminate any uploading time.

But it seems that every language needs its own full installset, and t
hat is a no-go for actual redistribution.

>>         + if 2 people use it – build it themselves pwrt. daily builds.
>
> Quite sure more than 2 people will use it, as i would be one of them,

Exaggeration to make a point.

And flatpak has a different approach/has repository style backing, but
even that is not a general purpose distribution at the moment.
And for TDF builds flatpak also has deminshing returns, since the main
benefit of the dependencies are already taken care of..

>>      + the request is “become a linux distribution” (Michael)
>>        + flat-pack doesn’t include the GNOME run-time (Stephan)
>>        + AppImage sounds like it will include ~everything:
>>          Gstreamer + all codecs etc. - from some random PC (Michael)
>
> No the appimage will only include the same files LO bundles in the released .deb and .rpm files found in the .tar.gz. It assumes the users system has the necessary other dependencies on their system.

Then no added benefit.

> […]
>>           + AppImage works hard to solve a problem we already solved:
>>             of being an ISV on Linux – it is hard but solveable.
>
> Appimage tries to solve a major problem on linux, easily running an app on any linux distro,

Again: Already solved by TDF builds by using a baseline that  doesn't
introduce runtime issues.
The major problem doesn't exist for LibreOffice. For other software
that is a selling point, but LO already has solved this problem in a
different way.

Just  answer: Why should I convert to an appimage, if I could also
could just  create a tarball or iso-image or similar of the extracted
rpm packages? Same effect for LO.
Add a link to toplevel so people don't need to browse to
opt/libreoffice/program to launch, but then it's the same thing,
right?

ciao
Christian