Release Linux builds through common app stores via Flatpak/AppImage/Snap packages

[13hannes11]

It would be great to have an installable editor, for example as Flatpak or AppImage.

[Keavon]

Would a progressive web app (PWA) be sufficient? We should probably set up the manifest for that to work better by default. My concern with an installable editor that isn't a PWA would be the burden to provide updates and deal with that infrastructure. We'll have to handle that in the long-term when we have a desktop app, but I'm worried it will distract from the pace of development right now if we have to maintain more infrastructure. If you have any thoughts about how this might be simpler or more important than I'm realizing, I am all ears so please let me know!

[13hannes11]

I think something like https://tauri.studio could be used but it's understandable that as of now a purely web based app is easier to maintain. And unfortunately I neither have any experience with tauri nor do I know much about the requirements for Graphite.

For the sake of getting users it might be nice though to at least provide some wrapper that allows a "local" install while just pointing to the website wrapped in a browser window.

[Keavon]

Yeah, we've looked at Tauri and it looks like a promising project for the future, but isn't really ready yet. I think PWAs are the way to go at the moment, so we should certainly set up the manifest correctly so the browser prompts for that with the correct metadata. And then we can hopefully do whatever is feasible for a desktop version that doesn't require a big maintenance burden. (So if anyone is reading this in the future, please feel free to suggest ways that this could be achieved without much dev overhead.)

[alerque]

For other people hitting this open issue looking for dekstop info, it look like #636 implemented a Tauri based desktop wrapper. This issue for containerized Flatpak/AppIamage may be relevant for folks that want those packaging formats, but if you just want a desktop something the discussion in this issue is old news.

That being said build instructions are pretty sparse. I can get the web stuff to build to wasm and a desktop binary to build, but so far getting all the assets combined so the desktop build finds the static web and wasm assets it needs is not going well...

[Keavon]

We're working towards getting official Tauri builds supported in the next few months. We can look into which package managers to offer it through after we have downloads on our website. We're blocked on tauri-apps/tauri#9220 for Linux though.

[joewood9364]

Please focus on Flatpak as this will make it compatible with atomic desktop like Silverblue, Aeon etc. and Flathub is great for discoverability.