1278719 - (flatpak) [meta] Use Flatpak framework to distribute Firefox for Linux users

Status: NEW

(Firefox Build System :: Third Party Packaging, enhancement)

Description

[Bastián Díaz]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:46.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/46.0
Build ID: 20160512103250



Actual results:

Firefox updates depend on each Linux distribution maintainers, which makes its slow deployment. Considering the importance of security updates in a web browser, this system is inefficient. Moreover, the classic tarballs are unfriendly to the end user.

In the Mozilla blog, announced to use Snap to distribute Firefox on Ubuntu https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/04/21/firefox-default-browser-for-linux-users-ubuntu-new-snap-format-coming-soon/
Snap is package format with good intentions and has good features like sandboxing or direct update from the author, however, is a niche technology and is very hard to use a Snap application outside Ubuntu, even in previous Ubuntu versions or other Debian based systems.


Expected results:

It would be great to distribute Firefos as a Flatpak package (aka xdg-app) for Linux users.
Flatpak (http://flatpak.org/) is a nice framework to distribute applications on Linux standalone, safely and independently of the linux distro.

The Document Foundation, distribute LibreOffice as a flatpak package (https://www.libreoffice.org/download/flatpak/).
Flatpak is still in active development, but it is very promising features.  Currently you can use Flatpak in several distributions very easily, including Ubuntu. In addition existing graphical tools that support easy installation Flatpak applications.

Comment 1

[Cosmin Muntean [:cmuntean], Ecosystem QA]

Considering the fact that this is an enhancement, I will assigned a component to this issue in order to involve the development team and get an opinion on this.

Comment 2

[Bastián Díaz]

(In reply to Cosmin Muntean [:CosminMCG] from comment #1)
> Considering the fact that this is an enhancement, I will assigned a
> component to this issue in order to involve the development team and get an
> opinion on this.

Thank you very much

Comment 3

[Vadim Rutkovsky]

I've created a PoC of the manifest at https://github.com/vrutkovs/firefox-flatpak

Comment 4

[Paul [pwd]]

Given that Snap is now universal to Linux, is this still the correct approach?

Comment 5

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

(In reply to Paul [pwd] from comment #4)
> Given that Snap is now universal to Linux, is this still the correct
> approach?

I don't think you're right. Snap is still Ubuntu only but flatpack is distro independent. See https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4kxbqp/appimage_snaps_flatpak_pros_and_cons_comparison/d3j3vv4 for details.

Comment 6

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

See http://lwn.net/Articles/691309/

That doesn't change there's no indication which one will win on the long run.

Comment 7

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

(In reply to Mike Hommey [:glandium] from comment #6)
> See http://lwn.net/Articles/691309/
> 
> That doesn't change there's no indication which one will win on the long run.

Sure. My point is that Snap is Ubuntu only now and other distros needs to use something else. OTOH flatpack can be distributed on all distros include Ubuntu.

Comment 8

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

The point is Snap *is* going to be available on all the major distros, according to that lwn article.

Comment 9

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

(In reply to Mike Hommey [:glandium] from comment #8)
> The point is Snap *is* going to be available on all the major distros,
> according to that lwn article.

I'm not aware of any effort to get Snapy on Fedora by default (but it's possible to install it from third-party repo) and I don't expect Fedora will adopt that. 

AFAIK there's one big problem here - you can't create third party Snapy repo which is independent on Canonical - all Snappy packages has to be distributed from there. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Comment 10

[Paul [pwd]]

(In reply to Martin Stránský from comment #9)
> (In reply to Mike Hommey [:glandium] from comment #8)
> > The point is Snap *is* going to be available on all the major distros,
> > according to that lwn article.
> 
> I'm not aware of any effort to get Snapy on Fedora by default (but it's
> possible to install it from third-party repo) and I don't expect Fedora will
> adopt that. 
> 
> AFAIK there's one big problem here - you can't create third party Snapy repo
> which is independent on Canonical - all Snappy packages has to be
> distributed from there. Correct me if I'm wrong.

It's worth noting that all of the news today states that Fedora will support snaps natively
http://snapcraft.io/
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/goodbye-apt-and-yum-ubuntus-snap-apps-are-coming-to-distros-everywhere/
http://betanews.com/2016/06/14/ubuntu-snap-packages-linux-distros-fedora-arch-mint-opensuse/
https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/06/14/universal-snap-packages-launch-on-multiple-linux-distros/

Comment 11

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

(In reply to Paul [pwd] from comment #10)

[...]

> It's worth noting that all of the news today states that Fedora will support
> snaps natively
> http://snapcraft.io/
> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/goodbye-apt-and-yum-
> ubuntus-snap-apps-are-coming-to-distros-everywhere/
> http://betanews.com/2016/06/14/ubuntu-snap-packages-linux-distros-fedora-
> arch-mint-opensuse/
> https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/06/14/universal-snap-packages-launch-on-
> multiple-linux-distros/

That articles comes from Ubuntu folks and are more wish than reality.

Comment 12

[Bastián Díaz]

(In reply to Paul [pwd] from comment #10)
> (In reply to Martin Stránský from comment #9)
> > (In reply to Mike Hommey [:glandium] from comment #8)
> > > The point is Snap *is* going to be available on all the major distros,
> > > according to that lwn article.
> > 
> > I'm not aware of any effort to get Snapy on Fedora by default (but it's
> > possible to install it from third-party repo) and I don't expect Fedora will
> > adopt that. 
> > 
> > AFAIK there's one big problem here - you can't create third party Snapy repo
> > which is independent on Canonical - all Snappy packages has to be
> > distributed from there. Correct me if I'm wrong.
> 
> It's worth noting that all of the news today states that Fedora will support
> snaps natively
> http://snapcraft.io/
> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/goodbye-apt-and-yum-
> ubuntus-snap-apps-are-coming-to-distros-everywhere/
> http://betanews.com/2016/06/14/ubuntu-snap-packages-linux-distros-fedora-
> arch-mint-opensuse/
> https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/06/14/universal-snap-packages-launch-on-
> multiple-linux-distros/

I think Canonical is using the power of marketing, because use a Copr repository created by an employee of Canonical is far from being a work with the community and provide snap natively. You may find Flatpak in the official repositories of Arch and not in a AUR repository as Snap (Copr and AUR are repositories that can be created by any user and are not safe per se).

Comment 13

[Bastián Díaz]

(In reply to Martin Stránský from comment #9)
> (In reply to Mike Hommey [:glandium] from comment #8)
> > The point is Snap *is* going to be available on all the major distros,
> > according to that lwn article.
> 
> I'm not aware of any effort to get Snapy on Fedora by default (but it's
> possible to install it from third-party repo) and I don't expect Fedora will
> adopt that. 
> 
> AFAIK there's one big problem here - you can't create third party Snapy repo
> which is independent on Canonical - all Snappy packages has to be
> distributed from there. Correct me if I'm wrong.


What you mentioned is correct. It's a big problem because Canonical wants to create a centralized repository and distribute applications in their store, therefore, rather than creating an application distribution system for Linux, means something like "You can install Ubuntu applications on any distribution" and maintain the control of then. The operation will be similar to the Google Play Store, so all Snap with external repositories, they will be marked as unsafe by default.

I think that's not the agnostic distribution system is expected. I prefer to download an application directly from the author's website and this without intermediaries (Canonical servers) can make any upstrean changes.

Besides the size of the Snap packages they are crazy and as such can compare and unofficial Snap package (~1GB) and official Flatpak package (~160MB) of LibreOffice. As an additional note, the Flatpak runtimes are additional weight, but can be used by multiple applications.

Comment 14

[Andrei Petcu]

Also Flatpak seems more secure. They give access to the app only when needed. If a crazy user wants to open ~/.ssh in Firefox, the user will press Ctrl+O, Firefox will ask GTK to open the file, the user will browse and select the file, then GTK will offer the file as a bind mount to Firefox.

If an evil addon wants to do the same, it cannot. It needs user interaction for this. Basically the GTK file open/file save dialog guards the user's file system. I really like Flatpak's security model more than any other GNU/Linux way of distributing binaries.

Comment 15

[Jan Horak [:jhorak]]

FIY we've setup experimental unofficial Firefox Developer Edition flatpak repository there:
https://firefox-flatpak.mojefedora.cz/ with some installation instructions.

There are build scripts available on github: https://github.com/xhorak/firefox-devedition-flatpak

Currently our package grants access to whole filesystem as long as it is experimental stuff.

Comment 16

[michal]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332404 - may be needed for bringing plugins for flatpaked Firefox

Comment 17

[Yajo]

I think https://kamikazow.wordpress.com/2017/02/09/adoption-of-flatpak-vs-snap/ is worth looking. I hope to see this bug fixed, especially thinking about developer edition 

Comment 18

[Kyra]

Has anyone from Mozilla commented on whether this could be worked on or what is stopping them? Would be great to have the same stable / beta / nightly channels available on linux as other platforms through flatpak

Comment 19

[Chris AtLee [:catlee]]

Unfortunately we're not going to be able to get to this in Q4.

Comment 20

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

This is something that we have looked at (you can see by the dependent bugs), but we haven't got enough traction internally to decide exactly what the next steps are.

Based on my understanding of things, we need some Firefox specific patches in order to support special app paths inside the Flatpak and that would require a Flatpak unique build of Firefox.

I'd like to know if there is anything we can do to use a standard Firefox in a Flatpak or if we have to have the build changes referenced in the other bugs?

I honestly don't know enough about how Flatpaks work.

This is definitely something we would look to a community member to help drive.

Comment 21

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

The fedora people are shipping flatpaks of an experimental (aiui) wayland-enabled firefox, surely they can say what's needed.

Comment 22

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

Fedora provides flatpak Firefox at https://firefox-flatpak.mojefedora.cz/ for:

FirefoxNightly - Firefox Nighly
FirefoxDevEdition - Firefox Developer Edition
FirefoxNightlyWayland - experimental Wayland port
FirefoxNightlyCSD - experimental CSD port

There's also official flatpak "Store" at https://flathub.org/ with registered flatpaked apps.

We (Fedora folks) can surely pack and distribute Firefox at official flatpak store but we feel it would be better if the packages will be under direct Mozilla control. We're keen to help with any technical issues, provide the flatpak file etc.

Comment 23

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

What are the actual code changes to Firefox needed to make a Flatpak work?

Comment 24

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

AFAIK No code changes. See the scripts used by Fedora to build flatpak from various Mozilla releases:
https://github.com/xhorak/firefox-devedition-flatpak

1) You can flatpak existing Mozilla nightly binary builds by:
https://github.com/xhorak/firefox-devedition-flatpak/tree/master/org.mozilla.FirefoxUpstreamBinary

2) or do the whole build:
https://github.com/xhorak/firefox-devedition-flatpak/tree/master/org.mozilla.FirefoxNightly

I think the easiest start is to just place existing Nightly binary generated by Mozilla to flatpak shell. The examples at (1) may be outdated as we don't use that now but if you're interested we can surely update them for production use.

Comment 25

[Nicolas B. Pierron [:nbp]]

I just noticed this thread today, and while others are arguing to know which bundle systems work the best for all other distributions …

I just want to mention that in the mean time Nix users can install all the latest Firefox versions using the Nixpkgs Overlay provided by:

https://github.com/mozilla/nixpkgs-mozilla/blob/master/firefox-overlay.nix

(In reply to Mike Hommey [:glandium] from comment #8)
> The point is Snap *is* going to be available on all the major distros,
> according to that lwn article.

While this is not the case yet, Nix is *already running* on all Linux based distributions.

Nix can be installed quite easily on any Linux distribution, either with the packages of the distribution, or as a standalone isolated binary with https://nixos.org/nix/download.html

Comment 26

[Jan Horak [:jhorak]]

I'm going to fill some bugs what is not working ATM.

Comment 27

[N. W.]

Please stop this madness.

Please do not distribute Firefox as Flatpak packages.

After heaving read through https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/assorted-questions-about-snapd-use/1738 , it should be clear that Snap should be the way forward instead.

Please do the Linux world a favor and close this issue as NO PLAN TO FIX and mark it as duplicate of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1297513 .

The Linux world does not need even more fragmentation. A Snap package is enough.

Comment 28

[N. W.]

PS:

https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/1288

Comment 29

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

I am no expert with flatpa but on Debian, the following worked for me:
sudo apt-get install flatpak
sudo flatpak install --from https://firefox-flatpak.mojefedora.cz/org.mozilla.FirefoxNightly.flatpakref
flatpak run org.mozilla.FirefoxNightly

Comment 30

[u610723]

I've a working sample: https://gitlab.com/stevendobay/flatpak-plus/tree/master/org.mozilla.Firefox
It only works for x86_64 but everything seems to work with it(I'm using it for 2 days). It only gets permission to open $XDG_DOWNLOADS.

Comment 31

[Jan Horak [:jhorak]]

I've just updated scripts to build from upstream binaries:
https://github.com/xhorak/firefox-devedition-flatpak/tree/master/org.mozilla.FirefoxUpstreamBinary
There's a README how to do it. It downloads langpacks and puts them in distribution directory to make langpacks working (with inspiration in Firefox for snap: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/79290/diff/2#index_header ).

Comment 32

[Elena]

How is there still no official Flatpak for Firefox, with this bug being open for over two years? I was shocked to see that such a major application such as Firefox was nowhere to be found on Flathub, and upon searching all I could find was an unofficial Flatpak. And yet there's an official Snap? This seems bizarre to me. Flatpak is clearly becoming the modern standard for distributing applications on Linux distros. Snap is mainly just an Ubuntu thing.

Comment 33

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

We're actively working on a Flatpak.

It's in this bug

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1441922

Comment 34

[platon.work]

I propose to support the solution of the issue on Bountysource: https://www.bountysource.com/issues/62119829-use-flatpak-framework-to-distribute-firefox-for-linux-users

Comment 35

[ali.sherif10]

Feedback:
I installed Firefox Nightly from the Flatpak repo, because of bug #1514730. I force-enabled hardware acceleration and enabled Webrender. Also, I added DRI_PRIME=1 to the launch command.

1. Scrolling doesn't lag currently. I'll keep observing.
2. There's few lag in other places, but it doesn't make my experience terrible like the scrolling lag.

Unfortunately, the Flatpak (or maybe all Nightly) doesn't support send technical and interaction data to Mozilla to help development.

Comment 36

[Tristan Van Berkom]

I can see there has been some discussion about Flatpak and Snap here.

I wanted to point out that my colleague Valentin spent some time last month demonstrating a build of a single application targeting both snap and flatpak, this is interesting as it allows one to reuse much of the same build instructions, reducing the maintenance burden of supporting both distribution methods.

Coincidentally, he used Firefox as the application to build for this experiment. As it is a complicated enough build, Firefox was a good choice for the demo.

I thought it might be helpful to link his work here:

Blog post: https://valentindavid.com/posts/2019-03-27-freedesktop-sdk-snap/
Gitlab repo: https://gitlab.com/valentindavid/firefox-buildstream/

Comment 37

[Seqularise]

I tried beta build from flathub and noticed that wayland cannot be enabled, even with flatpak override, should i file a bug?

Comment 38

[compaq]

@Seqularise You likely forgot to add the --user, it seems this flatpak is installed to the local user only. I got it working via "flatpak override --env=GDK_BACKEND=wayland org.mozilla.firefox --user"

Comment 39

[ranisalt]

Overriding GDK_BACKEND=wayland breaks Firefox with the following message:

(firefox:2): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :99.0

Comment 40

[ranisalt]

The flatpak build requires --socket=wayland to be set for Wayland support to be enabled. Run

flatpak override [--user] --socket=wayland org.mozilla.firefox

to fix that. Should probably be added to finish-args.

Comment 41

[monteiro]

My flatpak version of firefox 75 has User Namespaces set to false, is this a bug?

Comment 42

[Emerson Bernier]

(In reply to monterro from comment #41)

My flatpak version of firefox 75 has User Namespaces set to false, is this a bug?

Flatpak blocks apps from using User Namespaces so this is expected.

Comment 43

[wsha.code]

I just tried out the flathub flatpak for Firefox 75.0 and noticed these things:

1. The only filesystem permission is xdg-download. The Fedora flatpak had several other locations enabled including ~/.mozilla. Is the flathub flatpak storing the user profile inside of the flatpak?
2. I tried "flatpak run --filesystem=host org.mozilla.Firefox" so that the flatpak could see my profile. I got the warning about running an older version of Firefox even though the latest version of Firefox I have used that profile with is the rpm version of Firefox 75.0. What is going on there? Can I use my existing profile with the flatpak version of Firefox?

Comment 44

[Emerson Bernier]

(In reply to wsha.code from comment #43)

I just tried out the flathub flatpak for Firefox 75.0 and noticed these things:

1. The only filesystem permission is xdg-download. The Fedora flatpak had several other locations enabled including ~/.mozilla. Is the flathub flatpak storing the user profile inside of the flatpak?

User profile is stored in ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla . It's not shared with profiles created from other firefox packages.

2. I tried "flatpak run --filesystem=host org.mozilla.Firefox" so that the flatpak could see my profile. I got the warning about running an older version of Firefox even though the latest version of Firefox I have used that profile with is the rpm version of Firefox 75.0. What is going on there? Can I use my existing profile with the flatpak version of Firefox?

Just copy ~/.mozilla to ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla

Comment 45

[Nolan Darilek]

What is the recommended way to provide feedback on the released Flatpak? Do we open new bugs, or is it sufficient to note things here?

After attempting to use this for the last few days, I've noted the following:

• Notifications don't work. I need to run flatpak override --user org.mozilla.firefox --talk-name=org.freedesktop.Notifications.
• The SpeechSynthesis API doesn't work in the Flatpak, but works fine on my desktop. Guessing another dependency is needed in the Flatpak?

Thanks.

Comment 46

[wsha.code]

Just copy ~/.mozilla to ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla

Thanks, I hadn't realized apps stored data in ~/.var. I tried copying ~/.mozilla as suggested, but I still get the dialog about using an older version of Firefox. Both "firefox --version" and "flatpak run org.mozilla.firefox --version" give me "Firefox 75.0". Any idea why the flatpak doesn't like in profile?

Comment 47

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

Please open a new bug for any issues you find with the Flatpak. You can find bugs that have already been reported here:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?product=Release%20Engineering&component=Release%20Automation%3A%20Flatpak&resolution=---

Comment 48

[Mihai Tabara [:mtabara]⌚️GMT]

Updating the URL to reflect bug 1441922 comment 68.

Comment 49

[JR Conlin [:jrconlin,:jconlin]]

On ChromeOS, the Downloads directory does not appear to function correctly. I am not sure if this is a problem with the $xdg_download setting or something inherent in ChromeOS. Running with --filesystem=home solves the problem, and makes firefox operate much like it does when installed natively (writing config opts under ~/.mozilla etc.)

I tried adding --filesystem=~/Downloads, and was able to navigate to the correct Downloads directory, however subsequent downloads defaulted to the internal, inaccessible download directory and downloaded items were silently dropped.

(I used Flatseal to make these changes more permanent on Linux under ChromeOS)

Comment 50

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp]]

https://evertpot.com/firefox-ubuntu-snap/ The post was about Snap (some of the issues are present in Flatpak too I assume), but there's a comment saying the Flatpak crash reporting is broken. No more details, but that's one of the things that wouldn't hurt to check once too many...