1646462 - Add Firefox ARM64/AArch64 option to Flathub (Flatpak)

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Release Engineering :: Release Automation, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Oscar Domingo]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:77.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/77.0

Steps to reproduce:

On a ARM64/AArch64 based distro with flatpak and flathub installed:
flatpak install flathub org.mozilla.firefox

Actual results:

error: Nothing matches org.mozilla.firefox in remote flathub

Expected results:

Firefox for ARM64/AArch64 should be installed as a flatpak.

Comment 1

[Clara Guerrero ( Need Info Brindusa Tot Please)]

Hi, I'm using a yoga c630-13q50 arm64 with windows 10 to try replicate your issue.

Are you using fedora?

I will move this over to a component so developers can take a look over it. If is not the correct component please feel free to change it to an appropriate one.

Thanks for the report.

Best regards, Clara.

Comment 2

[Oscar Domingo]

Hey Clara,

thanks for looking into this.

The distro when trying this is Mobian (https://gitlab.com/mobian1) (a derivative from Debian specific for the Pinephone); I opened the ticket because I believe the flatpak from flathub is managed by Mozilla: https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.mozilla.firefox

There are builds of the ESR version for Arm from the distro's package manager (https://packages.debian.org/buster/arm64/firefox-esr/download) but not the latest one, so I though it would be cool to be able to install the latest from flathub.

Hope that helps,

Cheers,
Oscar.

Comment 3

[Emerson Bernier]

Mozilla doesn't publish linux arm binaries at all which is prerequisite to publish them in flatpak: https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/83.0/

Comment 5

[TheEvilSkeleton]

Hi,

I've found a project called LibreWolf. It's based on Firefox, which I think it's relevant. They provide Flatpak packages for Aarch64: https://gitlab.com/librewolf-community/browser/linux/-/releases.

Here's their Flatpak repository: https://gitlab.com/librewolf-community/browser/flatpak.

I think if someone is willing to use their patches to make it successfully build with Aarch64, then that would be great.

Comment 6

[frederic.christ]

+1
I'm using an ARM64-based chrome-os device and would be happy to use the non-app-version of Firefox (with all it's benefits of integrated password manager, etc.)

Comment 7

[Michael Monreal [:micmon]]

It is really unfortunate that there is no Firefox/ARM Flatpak. Mozilla even advertises Flatpak as a way to run Firefox on Chromebooks (see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/run-firefox-chromeos). Granted, it lists x86 on the requirements. However many Chromebooks are ARM-based.

Comment 8

[David Heidelberg [:okias]]

(In reply to Emerson Bernier from comment #3)

Mozilla doesn't publish linux arm binaries at all which is prerequisite to publish them in flatpak: https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/83.0/

is there bug for that? I didn't found any.

Comment 9

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

Bug 1677963 is a prerequisite for that, and is listed in this bug's dependencies.

Comment 10

[David Heidelberg [:okias]]

Sorry, I have no idea how can I overlooked that. Thank you

Comment 11

[Alfredo]

Hi,
any update on this? I was able to install firefox via snap and librewolf via flatpak on arm64 ubuntu system. Unfortunately there are not builds for firefox dev or nightly or torbrowser.
Thank you

Comment 12

[lukas]

Hi, any update on this topic?
It well be great to use newest Firefox on my Debian 12 arm64 system.

Thanks and Regards
Lukas

Comment 13

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

Attachment: Bug 1646462 - add logging when running commands in flatpak repackage.

Comment 14

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

Attachment: Bug 1646462 - pass the architecture to flatpak build-export and ostree commit

Comment 15

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

Attachment: Bug 1646462 - add aarch64 flatpak repackage

Comment 16

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

Attachment: Bug 1646462 - ship arm64 flatpak repackage.

Comment 17

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/54c2aa2062df
add logging when running commands in flatpak repackage. r=releng-reviewers,bhearsum
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/60b05dd560e2
pass the architecture to flatpak build-export and ostree commit r=releng-reviewers,bhearsum
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/4153a93cb5ea
add aarch64 flatpak repackage r=releng-reviewers,bhearsum

Comment 18

[Cosmin Sabou [:CosminS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/54c2aa2062df
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/60b05dd560e2
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/4153a93cb5ea

Comment 19

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/ec7691427105
ship arm64 flatpak repackage. r=releng-reviewers,bhearsum DONTBUILD

Comment 20

[Cosmin Sabou [:CosminS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/ec7691427105

Comment 21

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

Attachment: Bug 1646462 - ship arm64 flatpak repackage.

Original Revision: https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D239302

Comment 22

[Phabricator Automation]

beta Uplift Approval Request

• User impact if declined: no arm64 flatpak until 138
• Code covered by automated testing: no
• Fix verified in Nightly: no
• Needs manual QE test: yes
• Steps to reproduce for manual QE testing: tested in https://mozilla-hub.atlassian.net/browse/QA-3458
• Risk associated with taking this patch: medium
• Explanation of risk level: This could potentially break the push to flathub, but 1) this task is a leaf so won't affect anything else, 2) we can't replicate this in staging so don't have a way to test it, 3) I'm thinking it's better to find out now than with 138.0b1
• String changes made/needed: none
• Is Android affected?: no

Comment 23

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/d32c19f08688

Comment 24

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

A try build based on Beta v137.0b4 can be installed using commands:

wget https://firefox-ci-tc.services.mozilla.com/api/queue/v1/task/ctMBoBE7QQyxN2m1R9dTpQ/runs/0/artifacts/public/build/target.flatpak.tar.xz
tar xf target.flatpak.tar.xz
flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak --user --no-gpg-verify remote-add firefox-try ./repo/
flatpak --user install firefox-try org.mozilla.firefox/aarch64

It cannot be installed using the generic command "flatpak install flathub org.mozilla.firefox", which still returns the error: "error: Nothing matches org.mozilla.firefox in remote flathub".

I believe this does not count as a fix since the latest build is not available in flathub.
Julien, am I wrong? Can you explain? Thank you!

Comment 25

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

The beta builds are on flathub-beta (which you can add with flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists flathub-beta https://flathub.org/beta-repo/flathub-beta.flatpakrepo, per https://discourse.flathub.org/t/how-to-use-flathub-beta/2111). It'll be visible on the main flathub repo when 137 makes it to release.

$ flatpak remote-info flathub-beta org.mozilla.firefox/aarch64
        ID: org.mozilla.firefox
       Ref: app/org.mozilla.firefox/aarch64/beta
      Arch: aarch64
    Branch: beta
Collection: org.flathub.Beta
  Download: 96.6 MB
 Installed: 256.8 MB
   Runtime: org.freedesktop.Platform/aarch64/24.08
       Sdk: org.freedesktop.Sdk/aarch64/24.08

    Commit: 95f63fe1cdcb43a2e01bafb192657ef5e2453275f188ad2eb92550af9fd4f84e
   Subject: Export org.mozilla.firefox
      Date: 2025-03-12 13:32:27 +0000

Comment 26

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

Since the release of Firefox v137.0, Firefox Release aarch64 can be installed using command "flatpak install flathub org.mozilla.firefox".
Furthermore, the latest Beta v138.0b3 aarch64 can be installed using the generic command "flatpak install --user flathub-beta org.mozilla.firefox//beta".
Tested on Ubuntu 2404.1 LTS installed on a MacBook M1 Pro. Closing report.

Comment 27

[Oscar Domingo]

Thank you very much to all those involved in making this happen! Just tried it on PostmarketOS (Pinephone) as well and it worked as expected. Thanks again.