My app natively requires some files in the ~/.app directory to launch (e.g. default user.conf file), how can I define its virtual (sandboxed) path in the Flatpak manifest?
I can change this path to ~/.var/app/.. in command but I don’t know what is the environment name to use in the build manifest (to copy some data there).
UPD. Found $HOME/.var/app/$APP_ID just not sure is the app will think that is really the ~/.app location alias.
You can’t use the user data folders while building the app. The folder is only created when the app is first launched.
Normally a program would initialize its configuration with some default values and then create the config file on its first run.
If you for some reason need a file with default values, you can add it to the Flatpak as a data file. Save it in the /app/share/app-name folder. Then, if on runtime no local config file exists, you can copy the default file to the local data folder.
Finally, the location of the data, cache and config folders are provided with the XDG_DATA_HOME, XDG_CONFIG_HOME and XDG_CACHE_HOME environment variables, as per the XDG Base Directory Specification.
If you use a toolkit like GTK, it most likely provides a helper function to access the folder in your program.
ERROR 404
ServiceConnection: file '/run/build/html/home.html' not found
Maybe I should use some native env option for these needs…
Is the /run/build/ path is valid for the container? - I can’t find these files in the parent host…
So, /run/build is where Flatpak Builder places the build sources during the build, with one folder for each module. However, it is not present when the app eventually runs.
So, you want to hard-code the htmldir to /app/share/html here.
Additionally, regarding the first two build commands:
You want to use a script source for this, as this will make it more readable. In Building your first Flatpak - Flatpak documentation, you can find a good example in the manifest.
I can’t find where is the server stores profile data inside the container…
By default, it uses ~/.appname folder.
The app is working, but I can’t find the files from the host machine.
Like I mentioned previously, apps should ideally read XDG_DATA_HOME and store their data there.
However, for apps that don’t follow this and still use a dot-folder in the home directory (think ~/.appname), you can use the --persist argument, with which Flatpak will mount a folder in the place the app expect it to be.
To illustrate: --persist=.appname will create a folder in ~/.var/app/APP_ID/.appname, which will be mounted in the sandbox under ~/.appname.
Sure, I understand,
this is old app, I’m trying to upgrade it (including installation ability with the Flatpak)
But I can’t find for example guest’s profile peers.dat in my host filesystem. I expect that parent host (that launches app with --user flag) able to read files from Flatpak runtime, or not?
When I launch the app, it creates a new profile, which indicates that it does not access my host profile (and should not, of course). Therefore, it stores these files somewhere I can’t find, under the Flatpak container, but where is it…
Maybe that’s because I’m searching inside my host home dir (e.g. ~/.local and ~/.var
Well, if you don’t add a --filesystem permission, the sandbox will prevent the app from reading files from the host. The expectation is for apps to request access over the FileChooser portal, instead of having broad access.
If you have data files in ~/.local/share/appname you want the app to read, move them to ~/.var/app/APP_ID/data/appname, as this is the data directory for the sandbox.
Otherwise, you could add the xdg-data/appname permission to gain selective access to the data folder, but this is not recommended at all.
parrent host > flatpak app - to check (manually) is really the app works inside the sanbox as expected or backup / change some files from there (e.g. by using parent system file manager)
I wonder as can’t find any files that sandboxed app generates in its default profile location. And I don’t understand where is this location in my parent/host file system.
Because the application seems generates new profiles on its every launch, so I want to check the files, what is going on there, inside the sandbox profile.
By default, when no filesystem argument was passed, a Flatpak app can only access the following:
Content of the runtime (e.g. org.freedesktop.Platform), read-only
Content of your app (as build using the manifest), read-only
App-specific document store, where files will be mounted when using a portal
App-specific data, found under ~/.var/app/APP_ID
Anything else on the host is inaccessible by the app.
The files are mounted in an virtual filesystem. A folder which isn’t from the before mentioned places is created temporarily and is lost when the app quits. You can use the persist option to make homedir-related paths persistent, which then are stored as well under ~/.var/app/APP_ID. You can think of ~/.var/app/APP_ID being ~ inside Flatpak for folders set with persist .
After some time of reading the docs, I found this example for bitcoind-based apps, where it seems I should really use --persist option with original app profile dirname. Before I’ve just tried this flag without the =value, and also expected that --persist argument will change flatpak locations to the host homedir, lol.
now it works!
"finish-args":
[
"--share=network",
"--persist=.profile-dir-name" <-- it is .bitcoin for the bitcoin wallet
]
~/.var/app/APP_ID/.profile-dir-name - the files are now being kept here
You can think of ~/.var/app/APP_ID being ~ inside Flatpak for folders set with persist
Thank you for detailed explanations, especially for the read-only markers!
Now I got how does it work!
