Re: xdg-app discussions at the GNOME DX hackfest

[Alberto Ruiz <aruiz gnome org>]

Hi Allan,

Thanks a lot for summing this up. Some comments below

2015-01-30 11:28 GMT+00:00 Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>:

Hi all,

I just returned from the recent GNOME Developer Experience Hackfest in
Cambridge, UK. We discussed xdg-app a fair bit, particularly in terms
of the overall user experience it could provide. I've copied my
(incomplete) notes below, for those who might be interested.

Application sandboxing v bundling
---------------------------------

 * Sandboxing on its own may not have direct (or obvious) benefits for
application authors.
 * If sandboxing is optional, there is a danger that its value will be
undermined.
 * The architecture of xdg-app has implications for the design of
application sandboxing.

Therefore, it might be premature to introduce bundling before
sandboxing has matured, and there might be value in linking xdg-app
and sandboxing, so that xdg-app is introduced with mandatory
sandboxing. At the very least, careful thought needs to be given to
the implications of xdg-app for sandboxing, before the former is
released into the wild.

 

I would say that the logic should be exactly the opposite, I don't think we can realistically provide all the hooks that most apps need all at once and delaying widespread adoption of bundles because of that seems like a net lose. We want people using the bundling mechanism ASAP so that we can start getting them into the toolchain, then we can learn what kind of tooling is missing to get them to "upgrade" into sandboxing.

Eventually we can make sandboxed apps mandatory in our app store, that's a decision we can take anytime so I don't really see much of a problem there with regards to encouraging a migration towards fully sandboxed apps.

If we wait for a world where everything is finished we will never get there IMHO.

Miscellaneous questions and topics
-----------------------

 * How to handle codecs?
 * There will need to be support for other operating system add-ons
(fonts, dictionaries, input method engines, keyboard layouts, etc).
 * Should Builder be able to download and install runtimes?

There are system-wide addons and there are app-specific addons. A certain level of infrtastructure/APIs for app developers to handle addons automatically within its own "storage space" would be desirable.

I would also like to emancipate system-wide addons from the system (system-wide rpm/debs) and just being able to drop those in a directories that are not affected by system upgrades. Drivers and frameworks/runtimes (Qt, .NET...) and such are way trickier, but would be nice to be able to make them available in a similar fashion.

--

Cheers,
Alberto Ruiz