Feature request: Flatpak

[Beth Claire]

Flatpak is a format for packaging Linux desktop applications that can work on most distros using a single binary.  Given the difficulty of packaging Sagemath for each distro, and the difficulty of updating existing Sage packages to work with newer versions of distros, I think having a flatpak package of sagemath would make it easier to get the latest version of Sage running on as many systems as possible.

--Beth

[Volker Braun]

flatpak is designed for gui apps, registering a desktop icon and so on. To really make use of it we'd need at least a small gui app that then lets you start/stop the jupyter server and/or launch browser windows. 

If you just want to run Sage then there is already a one-liner podman / docker command to download and run it (and with podman any user account can do it, no permission setup needed):

 podman run  -it sagemath/sagemath

[318...@gmail.com]

Flatpak actually can handle CLI-only apps: for example, see mosh or appstream-glib.  They are hidden on the Flathub website, and that is by design.

But yes, what I really want is an any-distro way to easily launch Sage and a Jupyter notebook in a browser.  

[Samuel Lelievre]

2021-04-18 08:17:31 UTC, Volker Braun:

flatpak is designed for gui apps, registering a desktop icon and so on.

To really make use of it we'd need at least a small gui app that then

lets you start/stop the jupyter server and/or launch browser windows. 

Marc Culler's SageMath-macOS app could provide inspiration for that.

If you just want to run Sage then there is already a one-liner

podman / docker command to download and run it (and with

podman any user account can do it, no permission setup needed):

 podman run  -it sagemath/sagemath

 I installed podman under macOS using Homebrew by running

```

$ brew install podman

```

and I then got the following error running the command above:

```

$ podman run -it sagemath/sagemath

Error: cannot connect to the Podman socket, please verify that Podman

REST API service is running: Get "http://d/v3.1.2/libpod/_ping": dial

unix ///var/folders/fp/.../T/podman-run--1/podman/podman.sock:

connect: no such file or directory

```

Seems I'm missing one step to get the REST API service running.