This repository contains a BuildStream project that produces the Platform and SDK Flatpak runtimes for applications on Endless OS.
The easiest way to compile this project is with the included Makefile. You may need to install BuildStream, which is explained later in this section.
To build and install for your host system:
make
Compiles the BuildStream project, using saved artifacts where possible. This fetches many gigabytes of data over the Internet and may take several hours. The resulting flatpak runtimes and extensions are exported to separate ostree repos in cache, and then pulled into the ostree repo at repo:
flatpak remote-add --user --no-gpg-verify endless-sdk-flatpak-repo repo
flatpak remote-ls --user endless-sdk-flatpak-repo --all
You can export to an existing repo by setting the REPO variable:
make REPO=/path/to/repo
In addition, you can use the ARCH variable to build for a different architecture:
make ARCH=arm
Our Makefile includes some other targets which may be useful.
make check: Check that the BuildStream project is validmake track: Update references to the newest versions.make bundle: Create a set of Flatpak bundle files in out.
If you do not have BuildStream available on your system, you can try installing the newest version using pip:
pip3 install --user BuildStream BuildStream-external
BuildStream also has several runtime dependencies which you will need to install. For example, using apt on Debian 10:
apt install bubblewrap python3-pip libostree-dev lzip libgirepository1.0-dev
On Endless OS you'll need to install some dependencies and unlock the ostree first as well:
sudo ostree admin unlock # add --hotfix if desired
sudo apt install python3-dev minilzip gir1.2-ostree-1.0
Endless OS has a 3.x version of FUSE, incompatible with the latest stable version of BuildStream which expects 2.x. Luckily, it's easy to fix. After you have installed BuildStream (make sure it is installed with --user), edit ~/.local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/buildstream/_fuse/mount.py and remove , nonempty=True from line 187.
The Makefile is mostly intended for our CI system, so for some tasks you will have a better experience using BuildStream directly.
To build flatpak runtimes, use bst build:
bst build flatpak-runtimes.bst
Next, you can checkout the runtimes to an ostree repository:
bst checkout -f flatpak-runtimes.bst /path/to/repo/
ostree summary --repo=/path/to/repo --view
To compile for arm, you will need an arm or aarch64 host. Next, you can specify the target architecture with arch project option:
bst -o arch arm build flatpak-runtimes.bst
Note that you must include -o arch arm for any bst commands, including bst checkout.
bst -o arch arm checkout -f flatpak-runtimes.bst /path/to/repo/
ostree summary --repo=/path/to/repo --view
This project uses reproducible builds, which means any commit in the endless-sdk-flatpak repository should always produce the same build output regardless of when it is built. To release a change in the Endless SDK, including changes in separate repositories such as eos-knowledge-lib or libdmodel, you must create a new release of endless-sdk-flatpak.
First, use bst track to update the references for included code, telling buildstream to use the newest commit from the tracked git branches. For example, if you wish to include a change to eos-knowledge-lib, you can use bst track sdk/eos-knowledge-lib. For convenience, you can use make track to update the references for all of the elements in this project.
Once you have a release to test, create a new branch and make a pull request. After the pull request is merged to the sdk-6 branch, the CI system will create a development build of the new release and push it to the staging Flatpak repository. Before releasing to production, create an annotated git tag in the sdk-6 branch:
git tag -a v6.0 -m "Releasing version v6.0"
Next, run the release-sdk Jenkins job to promote the most recent build to the production Flatpak repository.
This project includes customized versions of elements included in the upstream gnome-build-meta and freedesktop-sdk BuildStream projects.
Our project is mostly a superset of those projects, using junctions defined in elements/gnome-sdk.bst and elements/freedesktop-sdk.bst. However, certain elements are replaced with our own modified versions. These modified BuildStream files are organized into directories such as elements/gnome-sdk-sdk and elements/freedesktop-sdk-components, as well as elements/sdk.bst and elements/platform.bst. When updating junction files, make sure these elements correspond with their upstream counterparts to avoid conflicts.
As of SDK 6, the Flatpak runtime generated by this project includes a version identifier, which is based on the output of git describe. You can find the version for the installed runtime by using flatpak info. Tagged releases from the CI system should have versions like "v6.0", while unstable releases will have versions like "v6.0-1-abcdef1" or "v6-devel". You can easily check out the commit corresponding to a release using git checkout followed by the version, such as git checkout v6.0-1-abcdef1.
To test your local version of the SDK with an existing Flatpak application, you can use the run-flatpak-app utility:
./utils/run-flatpak-app com.endlessm.encyclopedia.en
This will create a BuildStream element for the application, build it, and run it in a sandboxed environment. Note that subsequent runs should be faster. To stop BuildStream from rebuilding other components when you are making a simple change, try running with the --no-strict option:
./utils/run-flatpak-app --no-strict com.endlessm.encyclopedia.en
Note that the environment created by run-flatpak-app is slightly different from the one used by Flatpak. Runtime extensions, such as those listed by flatpak info com.endlessm.apps.Sdk//6 --show-metadata, are not available, and the sandbox has limited filesystem access. This tool is simply intended for quick testing.