Using nightly apps

Applications
1

Hi all! Recently I switched to Fedora Rawhide and with it I also thought about switching my (GNOME) Flathub apps to their nightly counterparts. I already did so for Core apps, but I was wondering what’s the best course of action for Circle or other apps, like Fractal, Fragments or Foliate?

I’m not really a programmer, so I thought about at least helping with testing.

2

I use GNOME OS to test core apps. It is better than Fedora Rawhide and at least %100 up to date.

3

Yes, I also thought about this possibility, but with Rawhide I have a little bit more trust that my stuff will keep working. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think GNOME OS preinstalls apps as flatpaks, right?

4

See https://nightly.gnome.org/

There are Fractal and Fragments on it according to Files · main · World / fractal · GitLab and
Welcome to GNOME – Fragments.

For Foliate, you need to use GNOME Builder with the source code (GitHub - johnfactotum/foliate: Read e-books in style)

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Oh, I know about GNOME Nightly repo, I have it enabled on system since a quite long time. Those Core apps I mentioned earlier, I got them from there (Same with Fractal). Perhaps I should clarify it in the post, but I meant more about using them day-to-day.

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By “day-to-day,” do you mean every time there is a new commit? (I think even nightly builds aren’t necessarily built on every new commit)

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More like using them (i.e. apps) daily

8

Sorry, but I really don’t understand what you want. If the apps are installed, you can use them…

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I was asking whether it makes sense to use nightly version in such cases as a daily-driver. However, I think I answered my own question already.

10

Ok, that’s better understandable.

Here what I think of that:

  • It is always better to use stable versions (OS and apps) for daily (as regular) use.
  • For testing, it is better to have a virtual machine or a dedicated computer. Dual boot is possible, but booting might broke with the unstable OS .
  • Relative to app testing, there is no problem with flatpak apps, you can install them even on a stable OS (at least if you are testing only apps build with flatpak). You can also ask the developer when testing is needed: Daily builds? Only beta, rc, etc. versions? Builds with specific MR merged? Sometimes, there are also calls for testing.
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Daily driving nightly builds is beneficial, since you can catch and report bugs “on the go“. That’s a reason why I use Rawhide. It’s a cool way to help devs. Anyway, thanks for the answers.

BTW, I use Fedora Silverblue, so flatpaks are the only way I can get apps.

1 Like
12

Not all circle apps have nightlies:

  • A lot of apps are hosted on gitlab.com, github, codeberg etc - I’m pretty sure they have to be on gitlab.gnome.org for nightlies
  • A lot of apps don’t have the devel appid setup - Builder’s template doesn’t do it automatically, and not everyone bothers. I personally don’t have it in Elastic, because who cares, it’s a tiny app and it barely has any changes in main
  • Some apps are also developed against stable SDK instead of nightly - so you don’t get nightly libraries either

Some will have regular nightlies; those will just be in gnome-nightly.

As for other apps - they are not allowed to be in gnome-nightly. E.g. I’d very much like highscore to have nightlies, but as it’s not in circle (which it can’t be because it’s not released yet), I have a few scuffed scripts for downloading flatpak repo from ci and setting it up as a remote instead. And most apps likely just don’t have anything, or maybe CI bundles and that’s it.

1 Like
13

Can we know what your goals are regarding testing?

Because testing rawhide and multiple applications seems like a lot to do, unless you really have a lot of time to devote to it…

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Not really. It’s not like you constantly fight bugs or crashes. In fact my experience was pretty normal so far.

15

Ok, so really “on the go”. If you plan to get into bug hunting later (if it’s not something you have done before), you can pick an app, try reproducing bugs, and help clean up an issue tracker a bit. That’s also a good way to help.

1 Like
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Not a requirement to be on the gnome gitlab, if the application is in circle we can set it up to push to Nightly as well, I don’t think that anyone has asked for it yet however.

Also not a requirement, Nightly and Flathub use different branches for the application so its a matter of choosing the version with flatpak make-current org.foo.bar//{master, stable}

That is also fine and up to the application, you will still get builds of the application, you can choose whichever dependency you want and update at your own pace.

While being in Nightly is a perk of being in Circle, the nightly repo is not the “Circle :tm:” repo. We can (and had in the past) other applications hosted here as well, its not a requirement but its highly encouraged to be in Circle. I don’t think anyone would object if we distributed Highscore nightlies already.

17

Ah, TIL.

Makes sense, but I mean it just makes it a pain to use them.

It will fail to install if you don’t have flathub tho. Tho ig by now everyone has it so it’s not really a concern.

Oh huh. That may be useful, tho also I have 2 plugins that are separate due to using a non-commercial license, I’m not sure those can be there? On flathub it’s not a problem ofc, but otherwise currently I just build 3 bundles in CI instead of 1 (from a single manifest, so it still works in builder)

Tho well, at this point the app is fairly close to a release and hence being on flathub, so prob doesn’t really matter.

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