PyBitmessage-2021-04-27/packages/flatpak

PyBitmessage Linux flatpak instructions

Some recent Linux distributions don't support QT4 anymore, hence PyBitmessage won't run with a GUI. However, if you build PyBitmessage as a flatpak, it will run in a sandbox which provides QT4._

Requirements

First make sure you have flatpak and flatpak-builder installed. Follow the instructions for your distribution on flathub. The instructions there only cover the installation of flatpak, but flatpak-builder should be the same.

Build and Install

Once you have flatpak and flatpak-builder installed:

git clone git://github.com/Bitmessage/PyBitmessage.git
cd PyBitmessage/
git submodule add https://github.com/flathub/shared-modules.git
flatpak-builder --install --user -install-deps-from=flathub --force-clean --state-dir=build/.flatpak-builder build/_flatpak org.bitmessage.PyBitmessage.json

This will install PyBitmessage to your local flatpak user repository, but it takes a while to compile because QT4 and PyQt4 have to be build, among others.

Run

When installation is done you can launch PyBitmessage via the command line: flatpak run -v org.bitmessage.PyBitmessage

Flatpak also exports a .desktop file, so you should be able to find and launch PyBitmessage via the application launcher of your Desktop (Gnome, KDE, ...).

Export

You can create a single file "bundle", which allows you to copy and install the PyBitmessage flatpak on other devices of the same architecture as the build machine.

Create a local flatpak repository

flatpak-builder --repo=build/_flatpak_repo --force-clean --state-dir=build/.flatpak-builder build/_flatpak packages/flatpak/org.bitmessage.PyBitmessage.json

This will create a local flatpak repository in build/_flatpak_repo/.

Create a bundle

flatpak build-bundle build/_flatpak_repo build/pybitmessage.flatpak org.bitmessage.PyBitmessage

This will create a pybitmessage.flatpak bundle file in the build/ directory.

This bundle can be copied to other systems or installed locally:

flatpak install pybitmessage.flatpak

The application can be run using flatpak:

flatpak run org.bitmessage.PyBitmessage

It can then be uninstalled with this command:

flatpak uninstall org.bitmessage.PyBitmessage

This way of building an application is very convenient when preparing flatpaks for testing on another system of the same processor architecture.

Cleanup

If you want to free up disk space you can remove the Sdk runtime again: flatpak uninstall org.freedesktop.Sdk//18.08

You can also delete the build directory again.