Freedesktop SDK 25.08.0 released!

Announcements
1

Hi everyone,

We have now released Freedesktop SDK 25.08.0

Check the NEWS file for all the updates:
https://gitlab.com/freedesktop-sdk/freedesktop-sdk/-/blob/release/25.08/NEWS

Main changes are:

  • [BREAKING CHANGE] openh264 and ffmpeg-full extensions have been replaced by codecs-extra runtime extension
  • [BREAKING CHANGE] intel-vaapi-driver has been removed (replacement is intel-media-driver)
  • [BREAKING CHANGE] Dropped elements from Flatpak SDK/Runtime: vulkan-validation-layers, ruby, tcl, tk, libfdk-aac, gtk-doc, pygobject, python-six
  • [BREAKING CHANGE] Dropped elements from project: shellingham, requests-toolbelt, pyexpect, html5lib, clikit, cleo, cachecontrol, cachy, sdl2-(image,ttf)
  • [BREAKING CHANGE] It’s now possible to create more minimal runtimes thanks to rework of bootstrap-import.bst. This adds a new stack public-stacks/buildsystem-make.bst which is essentially same as the original bootstrap-import.bst. There is also a new stack public-stacks/runtime-minimal.bst that is intended to provide a minimal environment that you can shell into. More info in the related issues: #1728, #1523
  • [BREAKING CHANGE]: Perl modules now use major.minor versioned directories and no longer uses the patch version. PERL5LIB or PERLLIB variables may need to be updated.
  • [BREAKING CHANGE] gettext: >=0.24 changed location of m4 files. They are now in /usr/share/gettext/m4 Configure scripts etc. needs to updated but this path can also be passed to autoreconf -I /path/to/m4
  • [BREAKING CHANGE] automake/autoconf-archive: newer versions perform stricter verifications of flags etc.
  • [BREAKING CHANGE] glibc: 2.42 dropped the deprecated and obsolete termio.h header. Anything using it should probably change to termios.h or drop it.
  • New “install-licenses” variable: It will install licenses with the default script as defined in freedesktop-sdk; Downstream projects can override that variable with their own script
  • Added elements: rr debugger, GNU parallel, skopeo, sdl3, sdl3-(image,ttf), sdl2-compat, fmt, libtree, libsecret, taglib, pahole, nlohmann-json
  • New NVIDIA VA-API driver Flatpak extension
  • ZSTD compressed debuginfo resulting in smaller debuginfo size. GCC, LLVM, bitutils, elfutils, valgrind, gdb built with ZSTD support
  • GCC 15.1, Cmake 4.0.3 (-DCMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM=3.5 may be required when building), Meson 1.8.2
  • OCI images now comes with necessary files and directories like /tmp, /var/tmp, /root, /etc/group etc and the proper permissions on them
  • GDB now supports extra targets for cross debugging
  • Reproducibility fixes: New buildstream-reprotest utility.
  • Reproducibility fixes: binutils, sphinxcontrib-jsmath, oci-image, less, setuptools, gperf, open-iscsi pcsc-lite, python3-cryptography (python3-installer), python3-frozenlist, python3-propcache, ovmf, python3-faust-cchardet and probably more
  • RISC-V support has been improved, and we now run daily builds of the RISC-V variant thanks to the support of the community (RISC-V foundation, Codethink and individials that have donated RISC-V hardware)
  • Added metainfo files to all apps and runtimes and validate them
  • Most of the Python elements are built from git now
  • librsvg is built with avif support
  • Added libx264, libx265 and nvenc support to codecs-extra extension
  • Pipewire is built with LE audio support
  • General updates on all elements
  • A lot of other fixes and improvements

If you maintain an application using the Freedesktop SDK runtime, please consider upgrading the version, especially if you are still using 23.08 or earlier as It’s going to be EOL soon.
In most cases, this mostly requires changing “runtime-version” in the Flatpak builder manifest of the application.

This is the result of a year of work from all our contributors, thanks a lot to all of them!

1318 freedesktop_sdk_updater
1037 bbhtt
255 Freedesktop SDK Merge Bot
126 Seppo Yli-Olli
76 Abderrahim Kitouni
55 Valentin David
25 Jordan Petridis
19 Javier JardĂłn
19 Martin Abente Lahaye
19 Robin Lee
16 Erick555
12 Adrian Vovk
12 Ben Brown
7 Dor Askayo
7 Ignacy Kuchciński
6 Harry Sarson
4 Sam Thursfield
3 Dom Rodriguez
2 Jian-Hong Pan
2 Joe Melling
2 Matteo Martelli
2 ada-magicat
1 Adrien Plazas
1 Barrie Lui
1 Dan Yeaw
1 Dea Dia
1 Jeremy BĂ­cha
1 Joel Williams
1 John Graham
1 Marcel Ziswiler
1 Nazar Kazakov
1 Tanvir Roshid
1 Timo Paulssen
1 axtloss
1 axtloss2

Thanks as well to our infrastructure sponsors; without their help this
project will not be possible:

  • Codethink (x86_64, ARM and RISC-V runners)
  • https://osuosl.org/ (x86_64, ARM, PPC and RISC-V build servers)
  • RISC-V foundation (RISC-V build server)
  • https://www.worksonarm.com/ (ARM build server, even though they can not provide it any more)

Also special thanks to Codethink for some engineering support during the cycle

If you need assistance or have any issues, please get in touch!

Cheers,
freedesktop-sdk team

5 Likes