Workstation WG post on application bundles

[Nick Coghlan]

By way of Christian's recent post on F22 workstation plans [1], I
found this detailed post regarding the current status of application
bundles for rich client apps:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/desktop/2015-January/011427.html

I don't currently see anything there that conflicts with anything
we're planning to do, but it's probably something we should keep an
eye on to help ensure that the developer experiences for server side
applications and rich client applications don't diverge too far.

In particular, one question I can see arising is "What's the
difference between an application runtime and a software collection?".
Is there a better answer than "you can use software collections
without needing to run them in a separate container"?

Regards,
Nick.

[1] http://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2015/01/19/planning-for-fedora-workstation-22/

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan(a)gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

[Václav Pavlín]

Thanks for heads up Nick.

The overall idea looks similar to Lennart's proposal:
http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linux-systems.html

Which is definitely a good thing. Question is how we are going to 
approach the distribution method in Fedora - we are already getting 
familiar with OSTree through Atomic, but I am not sure if that's the 
best way of application delivery (at least until dnf learns to pull and 
install ostree images - how cool that would be:) On the other hand AFAIK 
we are missing some pieces in Koji to be able to bundle like this in 
RPMS - we'd need at least buildroots separated by tags (which would also 
solve a problem how to build SCL, by the way..)

Vašek

On 24.1.2015 11:49, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>  By way of Christian's recent post on F22 workstation plans [1],
> I
>  found this detailed post regarding the current status of application
>  bundles for rich client apps:
>  https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/desktop/2015-January/011427.html
>
>  I don't currently see anything there that conflicts with anything
>  we're planning to do, but it's probably something we should keep an
>  eye on to help ensure that the developer experiences for server side
>  applications and rich client applications don't diverge too far.
>
>  In particular, one question I can see arising is "What's the
>  difference between an application runtime and a software collection?".
>  Is there a better answer than "you can use software collections
>  without needing to run them in a separate container"?
>
>  Regards,
>  Nick.
>
>  [1] http://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2015/01/19/planning-for-fedora-workstation-22/
>  
-- 

Lead Infrastructure Engineer
Developer Experience
Brno, Czech Republic

[Nick Coghlan]

On 26 January 2015 at 21:58, Václav Pavlín <vpavlin(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  Thanks for heads up Nick.
>
>  The overall idea looks similar to Lennart's proposal:
>  http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linux-systems.html
>
>  Which is definitely a good thing. Question is how we are going to approach
>  the distribution method in Fedora - we are already getting familiar with
>  OSTree through Atomic, but I am not sure if that's the best way of
>  application delivery (at least until dnf learns to pull and install ostree
>  images - how cool that would be:) On the other hand AFAIK we are missing
>  some pieces in Koji to be able to bundle like this in RPMS - we'd need at
>  least buildroots separated by tags (which would also solve a problem how to
>  build SCL, by the way..) 
Looks like they're currently using a tool called Xdg-app to handle the
OSTree based installs:
https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/SandboxedApps#Tools

While there's a docs directory in the GitHub repo, it doesn't seem to
be published anywhere online that I can find.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan(a)gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

[Jan Zelený]

On 26. 1. 2015 at 12:58:05, Václav Pavlín wrote:
>  Thanks for heads up Nick.
>  
>  The overall idea looks similar to Lennart's proposal:
>  http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linux-systems.html 
To be honest I hope not because that proposal had severe implications 
throughout the entire Fedora. If I should imagine a specific technology, 
LinuxApps would be a much better fit for this purpose.

>  Which is definitely a good thing. Question is how we are going to
>  approach the distribution method in Fedora - we are already getting
>  familiar with OSTree through Atomic, but I am not sure if that's the
>  best way of application delivery (at least until dnf learns to pull and
>  install ostree images - how cool that would be:) 
Definitely not a plan for the near future (we are not even in Fedora yet) but 
it makes sense to have this long term, as dnf has a huge potential to be the 
installer of choice in Atomic.

>  On the other hand AFAIK
>  we are missing some pieces in Koji to be able to bundle like this in
>  RPMS - we'd need at least buildroots separated by tags (which would also
>  solve a problem how to build SCL, by the way..) 
Not sure what do you mean here but it seems to be related to the functionality 
of the earlier referenced Lennart's proposal. Why would you need buildroots 
separated by tags? Do you mean having some sort of database that would contain 
the information about package set that constitutes a certain part of the 
system (GNOME 3.14 for instance)?

Thanks
Jan

>  On 24.1.2015 11:49, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>  > By way of Christian's recent post on F22 workstation plans [1], I
>  > found this detailed post regarding the current status of application
>  > bundles for rich client apps:
>  > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/desktop/2015-January/011427.html
>  > 
>  > I don't currently see anything there that conflicts with anything
>  > we're planning to do, but it's probably something we should keep an
>  > eye on to help ensure that the developer experiences for server side
>  > applications and rich client applications don't diverge too far.
>  > 
>  > In particular, one question I can see arising is "What's the
>  > difference between an application runtime and a software collection?".
>  > Is there a better answer than "you can use software collections
>  > without needing to run them in a separate container"?
>  > 
>  > Regards,
>  > Nick.
>  > 
>  > [1]
>  > http://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2015/01/19/planning-for-fedora-workstation-... >
> 22/