Few days ago a new stable branch of "Flatpak 1.8" was released, which provides a system for building self-contained packages that are not tied to specific Linux distributions and run in a special container that isolates the application from the rest of the system.
Flatpak packages they are positioned as an excellent option for the distribution of packages, since they are not linked to any specific distribution nor are they part of the regular distribution repositories when preparing a universal container.
For security conscious users, Flatpak allows you to run an application in a container, providing access only to network functions and user files associated with the application, so any other information or data is beyond the scope of this.
Main new features of Flatpak 1.8
One of the main changes the developers worked on was offering a simplified implementation of the installation in P2P mode, this in order to allow and organize the loading of applications and runtime sets through intermediate nodes or drives for systems without a network connection.
Another important change was the default deactivation of automatic repository loading, located on local USB drives. With which this change made it possible to simplify the internal implementation of the P2P mode and increase its effectiveness.
Besides that an optional systemd unit has been added to detect automatically additional repositories on USB drives external connected.
To activate intermediate local repositories, the user must configure the repository by creating a symbolic link from / var / lib / flatpak / sideload-repos o / run / flatpak / sideload-repos.
On the other hand, for applications that have access to the file system, the forwarding directory is provided / lib from the host environment in / run / host / lib, Besides that new access permissions were added to the FS: "host-etc" and "host-os", which allows access to system directories / etc and / usr.
To generate more efficient code to parse GVariant files from ostreee, use variant-schema-compiler and in the build configuration the crypt provides the ability to build without libsystemd.
"Install-authenticator" has been added to the FlatpakTransaction API, which clients can use to install the authenticators required to complete a transaction.
For the part of the changes within the commands, of the most prominent in the option "–Commit =" added to the "flatpak remote-info" commands and "flatpak update" to specify a specific version of the OCI repositories.
And the change upgrade command to "flatpak upgrade", which is an alias for the "flatpak update" command.
Regarding bug fixes, the use of time zone data based on / etc / localtime of the host system, in order to solve the problems associated with the time zones in some applications. The installation of the env.d file from gdm has stopped as the systemd generators are better at this task.
Of the other changes that stand out from this new version:
- In the create-usb utility, partial commit export is enabled by default.
- The sysusers.d file was supplied to create the necessary users through systemd.
- Added option «- [no-] follow-redirect»To the commands«flatpak remote-add"And" flatpak modify "to prohibit / enable redirection to another repository.
- The Spawn API has been added to the portal system to obtain the actual process identifier (PID) of the running application.
- All OCI repositories (Open Container Initiative) have been changed to use the authenticator flatpak-oci-authenticator.
- Implemented input completion scripts for the fish command shell.
- Added initial support for delta updates for OCI repositories.
- Journal sockets mounted in read-only mode.
- Added support for exporting directories in document export.
- Allow direct access to ALSA audio devices for applications that have access to Pulseaudio.
Finally, if you want to know more about it, you can check the full list of changes in the following link