flathub_repo

• Building the Flatpak
  • Build
    • Create Flatpak repo of the app
      • Publish to app store
    • Bundle the Flatpak repo into an installable .flatpak file
    • We now have a .flatpak file that we can install on any machine with
    • We can see that it is installed:

Building the Flatpak

We imagine this is a separate git repo containing the information specifically for building the flatpak, as that is how an app is built for FlatHub.

Important configuration files are as follows:

• com.example.FlutterApp.yml -- Flatpak manifest, contains the Flatpak configuration and information on where to get the build files
• build-flatpak.sh -- Shell script that will be called by the manifest to assemble the flatpak

Build

This should be built on an older version on Linux so that it will run on the widest possible set of Linux installations. Recommend docker or a CI pipeline like GitHub actions using the oldest supported Ubuntu LTS.

Create Flatpak repo of the app

This is esentially what will happen when being built by FlatHub.

flatpak-builder --force-clean build-dir com.example.FlutterApp.yml --repo=repo

Publish to app store

When this succeeds you can proceed to submit to an app store like Flathub.

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The remainder is optional if we want to try installing locally, however only the first step is needed to succeed in order to publish to FlatHub.

Bundle the Flatpak repo into an installable .flatpak file

This part is not done when building for FlatHub.

flatpak build-bundle repo com.example.FlutterApp.flatpak com.example.FlutterApp

We now have a .flatpak file that we can install on any machine with

Flatpak:

flatpak install --user com.example.FlutterApp.flatpak

We can see that it is installed:

flatpak list --app | grep com.example.FlutterApp

Flutter App com.example.FlutterApp 1.0.0 master flutterapp-origin user

If we search for "Flutter App" in the system application menu there should be an entry for the app with the proper name and icon.

We can also uninstall our test flatpak:

flatpak remove com.example.FlutterApp