On Thu, Jul 24, 2025 at 1:34 AM Matěj Cepl <mc...@cepl.eu> wrote: > > On Wed Jul 23, 2025 at 10:53 PM CEST, Greg Hellings wrote: > > For a while I've been the basket holder for packaging the CrossWire related > > packages in Fedora. These include: > > > > biblesync > > mingw-biblesync > > sword > > mingw-sword > > xiphos > > bibletime > > I completely hear you (as a SUSE employee, I am in the same > situation and maintaining packages blindly without having an > actual Fedora machine at hand is such a challenge, that I am left > with only two relatively uncomplicated packages: lout and dictd), > but yet I have to ask: isn’t the year 2025 the time when we > should stop maintaining all these complicated toolchains multiple > times? Shouldn’t be there just a Flatpak for BibleTime [1], > Xiphos [2], using just one shared runtime of Sword and Biblesync > (and I have no idea how well maintained those two particular > Flatpaks are, BibleTime seems to be at least kept up-to-date)? > Isn’t that whole multiplication of the effort just waste of time?
This significantly raises the difficulty of installing those applications for many users. To my awareness, none of the major distros (Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, or openSUSE I think) have Flatpak with Flathub enabled by default. Fedora has Flatpak but Flathub is intentionally not enabled. So a user has to now install Flatpak, then enable Flathub, then install the flatpak, then log out and back in to get the application menu entry to show up if they just installed flatpak, and now the app is there but may need its permissions opened up with Flatseal. That's perfectly fine for an advanced or even moderately skilled user, but it's a mess for users who aren't technically skilled. Having these packages in native distro package managers means people can access them with a `sudo apt/dnf/zypper install` or using a graphical app store frontend like GNOME Software. It is a multiplication of effort, and unfortunately until major distros either start unifying (not going to happen any time soon, if ever) or start trusting universal "anyone can upload" software sources (may happen but would be scary), we're not going to be able to avoid that without doing users a disservice. > Blessings, > > Matěj > > [1] https://flathub.org/apps/info.bibletime.BibleTime > [2] https://flathub.org/apps/org.xiphos.Xiphos > -- > http://matej.ceplovi.cz/blog/, @mc...@en.osm.town > GPG Finger: 3C76 A027 CA45 AD70 98B5 BC1D 7920 5802 880B C9D8 > > The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they > can bribe the people with their own money. > -- based on a statement of Alexander Fraser Tytler > > _______________________________________________ > sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel@crosswire.org > http://crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel > Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page _______________________________________________ sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel@crosswire.org http://crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
