[GNC-dev] Flatpak GnuCash and Finance::Quote

[Bruce Schuck]

Thank you for the response.

I really wasn't expecting a fix, just clarification as I never worked 
with flatpak before. Makes sense that one would not want to be able to 
modify any of the related tools and supported applications (like perl 
and the F::Q modules for GnuCash). Making changes would violate the 
concept of why it's a flatpak.

At first my mindset is too used to the chroot, Solaris Zones, VMs, 
LXC/LXD way of thinking.

Thanks again also to John R for his responses.

Official F::Q v1.53 should be pushed to CPAN this Saturday, 10/08/2022.

- Bruce S.

On 10/5/22 1:08 PM, Geert Janssens wrote:
> Op maandag 3 oktober 2022 00:38:23 CEST schreef Bruce Schuck:
> 
>  > Hello all,
> 
>  >
> 
>  > Noticing that the most recent Flatpak version of GnuCash (4.12+ (Flathub
> 
>  > 4.12)) has v1.49 of Finance::Quote, I wanted to update to the recent
> 
>  > release candidate I pushed to CPAN. I believe there are issues running
> 
>  > gnc-fq-update or cpan within the flatpak container because some of the
> 
>  > modules required by F::Q v1.52 and later require the gcc compiler to
> 
>  > make and install. As far as I can see, gcc is not in the flatpak GnuCash
> 
>  > distribution.
> 
>  >
> 
>  > While copying the ./lib/Finance tree from GitHub or a downloaded tarball
> 
>  > may seem to work, some of the lesser used methods for data retrieval may
> 
>  > not work.
> 
>  >
> 
>  > - Bruce S.
> 
> 
> Flatpak follows a completely different distribution model than typical 
> distributions do. It starts from the concept of an immutable base 
> system. You are not supposed to manipulate this directly. So running 
> gnc-fq-update is unfortunately not supposed to work within flatpak and 
> the whole concept is designed to make that difficult to do.
> 
> 
> The runtime that's normally used to run flatpak applications doesn't 
> have any developer tools. You can switch to using sdk packages instead 
> as Frank linked to, but it remains limited.
> 
> 
> Having said that, there are several options to get newer versions of 
> Finance::Quote in the hands of gnucash flatpak users. Though all involve 
> rebuilding the gnucash flatpak in some way.
> 
> 
> 1. We have our own flatpak repository in which we publish nightly 
> builds. The source for these nightly builds is the 
> Gnucash/gnucash-on-flatpak repo on github. The build system is fairly 
> automated (more on that later).
> 
> 
> 2. You can also use the same repo to set up your own build environment 
> for gnucash flatpaks, if your main goal is to test for yourself or 
> before you submit a PR to gnucash-on-flatpak. I don't know how easy or 
> hard this is perceived by outsiders (I created that repo and the scripts 
> in there, so to me it's obviously not too hard).
> 
> 
> 3. The flatpaks as distributed on flathub are also under the gnucash 
> project's control. We typically first test our changes in 
> gnucash-on-flatpak and if proven ok, we copy the same patches to 
> flathub. Flathub offers both a stable and a beta branch. On stable we 
> should only push stable software, so release  candidates for 
> Finance::Quote don't belong there. However we could experiment on the 
> beta branch if that helps.
> 
> 
> The idea is the same in all cases: flatpak builds follow a recipe as 
> describe in a manifest file. Our manifest file is split up in smaller 
> parts for readability but in general this contains a list of source 
> packages, where to find them and how to build them. The sources for 
> Finance::Quote are in
> 
> https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash-on-flatpak/blob/master/modules/finance-quote-sources.json <https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash-on-flatpak/blob/master/modules/finance-quote-sources.json>
> 
> The way to update is to change version numbers of tar balls and the 
> sha256 sums for these tarballs. Pushing these changes to the correct 
> upstream repos will trigger new builds of the respective flatpaks.
> 
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 
> Geert
> 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_signature
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 495 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/attachments/20221005/b4a25aba/attachment.sig>