[digiKam-users] Future of digiKam bundles...

[Stuart T Rogers]

Yes I agree for some limited situations it may have a use. I for one 
have used appimage to try out a new version but my distro (a rolling 
release) is never far behind with providing stable releases of Digikam.

While the library thing may well need security fixes if I have the 
library on my system normally it will get security fixes probably almost 
as soon as they become available, how will I know these libraries will 
need updating in the flatpak and whether or not the package has been 
updated?

Stuart

On 25/05/2020 10:34, Remco Viëtor wrote:
> On lundi 25 mai 2020 10:38:31 CEST Stuart T Rogers wrote:
>> Having read a bit about flatpak now I do have some concerns.
>>
>> Firstly it seems that the actual deliverable will be considerably larger
>> than the normal install of Digikam say on openSUSE because it will need
>> to bundle in all the required other software it needs whether or not the
>> base OS already has the correct levels and versions installed.
> 
> That would be the same for appimage or any other similar packaging. And it's
> what is needed to make the package independent of the distribution and its
> versioning.
> 
>> Secondly while it runs in a sandbox it will likely increase the memory
>> requirement needed over what would normally be used because all the
>> additional code needed for execution will be loaded even if it already
>> exists and is loaded in the OS.
>>
>> Thirdly this seems to me to be a sledgehammer to crack a nut since I
>> have not heard of any security breaches being caused by running Digikam,
>> yes some other applications maybe should be sandboxed because of what
>> they do but I do not see the need for this with Digikam.
> 
> But I have seen security updates for *libraries* dealing with the image
> formats used by Digikam, like png.  So while the digikam code itself might not
> need sandboxing, this doesn't hold for the needed libraries.
> 
>> Lastly it needs additional software installed on my system which
>> currently I do not use. Appimage does not need anything in addition to
>> be able to test a new version of Digikam.
> 
> That is the price for (semi-)automatic upgrades for the flatpaks. Appimage
> does not provide a way to upgrade to newer versions.
>   
>> This seems to me to be a solution looking for a purpose.
> 
> Maybe. But I've had cases where the distribution-provided version was either
> much older than the (then) current version or crippled as my distribution
> didn't include a library or included a too old version.
> 
> So flatpak and appimage do have a use. That doesn't mean that having
> distribution-maintained repositories is now superfluous, but for programs that
> have a relatively small user-base, flatpak and similar have advantages.
> 
> Remco
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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