Publish the software as snap

[NaviDhana]

As the title says, could you deploy PokeMMO for Linux in snap?

 

I use Manjaro Linux as my daily OS and I don't know if the AUR is out of date or not since the last update was April 2018. The problem with Linux is they have different package system for each distributions and the PokeMMO for Manjaro and Arch is community-maintained, not published by the developer themselves. Meanwhile, snap is more universal than distribution-based packages, so you don't need to compile the software in DEB and RPM packages anymore. You just compile it in snap and Linux users can install it to every Linux distributions, even on Raspberry Pi, easily.

 

Thanks in advance.

[porcmare]

sounds nice since we had it ported on android, and adding more players like linux and mac users wouldn't hurt would it

[Deelunatic]

Not every OS has Snap as part of it's install by default due to licensing (Linux Mint for example), There is also Flatpak for a similar deployment method.

[tlater]

I created a proof-of-concept flatpak here. If PokeMMO are interested and give permission for this, I would be happy to submit this as a real package and try to get it into the flathub repository (note the package will download the .deb and install it into the runtime when the user runs the application, so this is not redistributing PokeMMO).

 

For reference, flatpak is a distribution-independent packaging format that makes it pretty easy to write Linux applications that will function across distributions, instead of just debian/fedora like the current deb/rpms or ubuntu-sanctioned distros like snap would. It also integrates better than debs/rpms, allowing you to literally install packages from a website like you might with the Android play store.

 

Flatpak also features sandboxing and a full, standardized sdk, making it much easier to test applications developed for Linux, since you're compiling against a known system - not the literal billions of possible systems that you might have in the Linux world. In my case, running PokeMMO in flatpak actually fixed several issues I had (no file picker menus, no sound, disappearing hover text).

 

The app requirements might be interesting if anyone with the permission to action this sees it. I've tried following these closely in my proof of concept, but I would need permission to use icons for copyright reasons.

 

For now, anyone interested in using a flatpak of PokeMMO, feel free to build my repository yourself!

Edited October 24, 2020 by tlater