Add alias in flatpak environment

LyzardKing · December 24, 2020, 12:06pm

Hi. Is it possible to add an alias in a flatpak environment?
So if the app in question is hardcoded to run for example the wine command I could use the version installed in host by setting an alias alias wine=flatpak-spawn --host wine.

Wine here being just an example, it would possibly work with all commands available in host.
I understand that this would escape the confinement, but it could be useful.

hub · December 24, 2020, 3:50pm

If you are the flatpak maintainer of the app, you can add a script to do so.

That’s what FreeCAD does to call OpenSCAD (and it does it using the flatpak)

LyzardKing · December 24, 2020, 4:06pm

You mean adding in the flatpak a wine shell script in /bin that runs the flatpak-spawn command?
It’s not a bad idea…

hub · December 24, 2020, 4:12pm

in /app/bin. Yes.

Like this:

github.com

flathub/org.freecadweb.FreeCAD/blob/master/openscad.sh

#!/bin/sh

#
# This wrapper makes a lot of assumptions on how openscad is called
# from within FreeCAD
#

BASEDIR="$XDG_CACHE_HOME/tmp"

if test "$1" != "-o"; then
    exec flatpak-spawn --directory=`pwd` --host flatpak run --filesystem="$BASEDIR" org.openscad.OpenSCAD $*
else
    REMOTE_OUT="$BASEDIR/`basename "$2"`"
    exec flatpak-spawn --directory=`pwd` --host flatpak run --filesystem="$BASEDIR" org.openscad.OpenSCAD -o "$REMOTE_OUT" "$3"
fi

The manifest part (installation):

github.com

flathub/org.freecadweb.FreeCAD/blob/master/org.freecadweb.FreeCAD.yaml#L591


  - -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
  - -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/app/freecad
  - -DCMAKE_INSTALL_DATAROOTDIR=/app/share
  - -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/app
  - -DBUILD_QT5=ON
  - -DSHIBOKEN_INCLUDE_DIR=/app/include/shiboken2
  - -DSHIBOKEN_LIBRARY=shiboken2.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu
  - -DPYSIDE_INCLUDE_DIR=/app/include/PySide2
  - -DPYSIDE_LIBRARY=pyside2.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu
post-install:
  - install -Dm755 ../openscad.sh ${FLATPAK_DEST}/bin/openscad
  - ln -s /app/freecad/bin/FreeCADCmd /app/bin/FreeCADCmd
  - install -D ../FreeCAD.sh /app/bin/FreeCAD
cleanup:
  - /freecad/doc
sources:
  - type: script
    dest-filename: FreeCAD.sh
    commands:
      - exec /app/freecad/bin/FreeCAD -u ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/FreeCAD/user.conf -s ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/FreeCAD/system.cfg "$@"
  - type: git

You need add --talk-name=org.freedesktop.Flatpak to the finish-args.