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While AppImage and Flatpak are formats that theoretically allow distribution-independent Linux "binaries" to be distributed, in practice they have proven to be problematic (e.g., #718, #919, #1029 and more).
An informal survey of preferences revealed that despite the need for root privileges, there is a significant portion of the user base that may prefer system packages for apps, rather than a user-space friendly packaging format.
Describe the solution you'd like
Briefcase should be able to generate a pacman-compatible .pkg.tar.zst file, for use on Arch-based Linux distributions
Describe alternatives you've considered
Do nothing, and rely on AppImage/Flatpak.
Additional context
As pacman packages are built from source at time of install, they should work across Arch-based distributions. This should be verified
As we are primarily working with Python code, Pacman packages should work across distribution versions (e.g., an Arch 2022-12-01 package should work with 2023-01-01), provided system packages are specified in ways that aren't version specific - e.g., specifying a libgtk-3 dependency should work on almost any version
Arch-based distributions all have Python3 interpreters in their default package repositories; however, that Python version will change between distribution versions. Briefcase generally guarantees that the python version used to build an app is the version used to run the app; however, we may need to (optionally) relax that requirement to apps to specify a generic "Python3" dependency, rather than a specific "3.10" dependency.
The manylinux specification should provide all the binary compatibility guarantees that are needed; as manylinux wheels have a very specific list of libraries they can link against, as long as the pacman package guarantees that subset, any installed wheel should (?) be binary compatible.
What is the problem or limitation you are having?
While AppImage and Flatpak are formats that theoretically allow distribution-independent Linux "binaries" to be distributed, in practice they have proven to be problematic (e.g., #718, #919, #1029 and more).
An informal survey of preferences revealed that despite the need for root privileges, there is a significant portion of the user base that may prefer system packages for apps, rather than a user-space friendly packaging format.
Describe the solution you'd like
Briefcase should be able to generate a pacman-compatible
.pkg.tar.zst
file, for use on Arch-based Linux distributionsDescribe alternatives you've considered
Do nothing, and rely on AppImage/Flatpak.
Additional context
See also #1062, #1063
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