mldonkey-next: Flatpak available

mldonkey-next target was implementing a new, modern, experience for mldonkey on mobile devices. However, Qt makes it simple to port an app from mobile to desktop, so I thought I could also provide a version for desktops.

AppImage

I decided to try AppImages at first: I found it a bit convoluted to build the package with the provided tools. In particular, linuxdeployqt has this policy:

linuxdeployqt refuses to work on systems any newer than the oldest currently still-supported Ubuntu LTS release, because we want to encourage developers to build applications in a way that makes them possible to run on all still-supported distribution releases.

While this makes sense, it also makes it extremely difficult to use new SDKs. This makes it almost useless for me.

However, other solutions exist, and the AppImage is available and built on a Ubuntu 24.04 base.

Flatpak

I also wanted to try the Flatpak format, distributing the app through Flathub. As the SDK is already available, it was extremely simple to build a Flatpak for mldonkey-next. However, this system also has same critical points: if the SDK is not available, it may take some time to port it and, if you want to upload to Flathub, you need to provide scripts so that they can build your software. I do not like this approach much.

However, you can now install mldonkey-next from Flathub here:

https://flathub.org/apps/org.duckdns.bugfreeblog.mldonkeynext

Please report bugs here if needed!

For more info on mldonkey-next refer to previous articles or the mldonkey-next repo.

Have fun! 😉