Add Flatpak to Linux install instructions

[alexanderW3]

Flatpak [1] is a new, disto-agnostic packaging & sandboxing technology. Currently it works out-of-the-box on Arch, Debian Stretch (or later), Endless OS, Fedora 25 (or later), Mageia 6 (or later) and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, for Ubuntu a PPA is needed. Flathub [2] is a central repository of Flatpaks, where I've uploaded a build recipe for 0 A.D.

It might be helpful to add these install instructions to ​https://play0ad.com/download/linux/:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

flatpak install flathub com.play0ad.zeroad

If you're interested, you can get push access to the recipe at [3]

[1] ​http://flatpak.org/

[2] ​https://flathub.org/

[3] ​https://github.com/flathub/com.play0ad.zeroad

[Vladislav Belov]

You could edit wiki:BuildInstructions. But why do you call it com.play0ad.zeroad? I think it should be like (org|com).wildfiregames.(0ad|zeroad). Itms could help here better than me.

[leper]

Currently it works out-of-the-box on [...]

For definitions of "out-of-the-box" that require installing packages. At which point one can just use the distro provided package, or for Ubuntu our PPA, or just not use a distro that ships outdated packages while expecting to use new packages.

That said this has all the drawbacks of static libraries, while also ignoring the great innovation of package managers. And since we aren't some closed source program I fail to see why we would need that, apart from having the Linux (not even *nix, so far for portable) have the same limitations as the Windows and OS X releases have.

[alexanderW3]

You're right, com.wildfiregames.zeroad would be better. Application IDs can't begin with a number, that's why I chose zeroad instead of 0ad.

I would expect to be able to easily use e.g. 0 A.D. Alpha 22 or LibreOffice 5.4 in Fedora 26, which has been released a few days ago, but ships Alpha 21 / LibreOffice 5.3 in its repos.

I didn't say that the project would need to support Flatpak, but I think the Flathub repo would be just as unofficial as the Arch community repos, which are listed on the page with installation instruction.

[leper]

I would expect to be able to easily use e.g. 0 A.D. Alpha 22 or LibreOffice? 5.4 in Fedora 26, which has been released a few days ago, but ships Alpha 21 / LibreOffice? 5.3 in its repos.

Well, then either wait for the packagers to do their job, or get it backported, or use a distro that does backports, or build it from source. Nobody prevents you from making Flatpaks, or AppImages, or Snap Packs, or Docker containers, or whatever the current reinvention of static binaries is.

I didn't say that the project would need to support Flatpak, but I think the Flathub repo would be just as unofficial as the Arch community repos, which are listed on the page with installation instruction.

The Arch [community] repo isn't unofficial, you might be thinking of the AUR which is.

[alexanderW3]

Flatpaks use mostly shared libraries, which are part of the runtime. And indeed, nobody prevented me from creating the package, I just thought it might be useful for others.

[elexis]

Agree with leper that this isn't the way to go (at least as long as it requires installing something beforehand).