Publish to major package managers

[theRookieCoder]

We would ideally want to publish to the most common package managers so that updating to the latest version is easy and convenient. These are the ones I have in mind;

• GitHub Releases
• Cargo (crates.io/lib.rs)
• AUR
• Scoop
• Nix Packages
• Pacstall
• Homebrew
• Gentoo Portage
• Void Linux XBPS
• winget
• Chocolatey
• Debian APT
• Fedora RPM

Preferably, these packages should use the existing Releases builds rather than compiling separately.
Their packages should also be updated automatically in the release workflow.

What happened to issue #42?

[NatoBoram]

There's a good alternative to Chocolatey on Windows: https://scoop.sh

It actually manages packages instead of just running the installer, unlike choco and winget.

[RokeJulianLockhart]

#292 (comment)

@NatoBoram, do you mean unlike?

[JustSimplyKyle]

yeah, scoop is great too.
Although chocolatey is the most well known(scoop is just behind)

[theRookieCoder]

It seems that Scoop is meant more for developer tools? Well it seems much easier to upload to anyways so I'll do both

[JustSimplyKyle]

https://gist.github.com/KyleUltimate/3e20b14ecbf6a5512912f8dc3addc4b7
This is my implementation of ferium in scoop. It's really easy to implement.
This should not even require action changing, the auto update should be done by scoop
(currently there is no hash checking because I'm lazy to check hash for windows)

[JustSimplyKyle]

I will add it later, it should also automatically update sha256sums too.

[JustSimplyKyle]

Ok now it also auto updates the hash too!

[JustSimplyKyle]

Also, do you consider ferium fitting this?
https://github.com/ScoopInstaller/Scoop/wiki/Criteria-for-including-apps-in-the-main-bucket
I think it does. Therefore
ScoopInstaller/Main#3558

[theRookieCoder]

Also, do you consider ferium fitting this?

I wasn't actually sure, I mean it isn't 'reasonably well-known' or a 'developer tool' right?

[theRookieCoder]

Oh and looking at the autoupdate, would the releases now need .sha256 files? Or is that some sort of shortcut?

[JustSimplyKyle]

I believe it's a shortcut!
Although I'm not sure bout that

[JustSimplyKyle]

Wait hmm no.
It's an direct file.
We still need to upload the sha256sum to github release too

[JustSimplyKyle]

#50
Done, haven't actually tested that tho.
It's a very simple one, it should just work

[JustSimplyKyle]

Calinou/scoop-games#616
Up!(This is the official game repository)
Installation step.

1. scoop bucket add games
2. scoop install ferium
   
   And it also auto upgrades! My pull request is 3.27.0, but it auto upgrades to 3.28.0!

[theRookieCoder]

This is great, thank you so much! Also where did you get the screenshot from, I can't find a Scoop index website with Ferium in it

[JustSimplyKyle]

https://scoop.sh/#/apps?q=ferium

[JustSimplyKyle]

Actually that shouldn't be needed since the other packages already have the provides field, which automatically setup the conflicts rules and stuff

Oh really, that's cool! So I can just remove every conflict that I have?

Actually for source-based packages, you need gcc-libs as dependency since on arch it builds by default against gcc, not musl (unless i specify the --target manually which can be tricky when using the rust package from official repository

I've tried to build my packages in clean chroot, and it does build!(using musl)

[JustSimplyKyle]

To use the workflow, first add Ilesh to co-maintainer
Then it should be as simple as adding the following to the release.yml

      - name: Update gui AUR package
        uses: ATiltedTree/create-aur-release@v1
        with:
          package_name: ferium-gui
          commit_username: "Ilesh Thiada"
          commit_email: ileshkt@gmail.com
          ssh_private_key: ${{ secrets.AUR_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY }}

[Nukecraft5419]

Could we also have a version for npm, and also a discord to have better support and contact also

[theRookieCoder]

Hmm not sure why ferium would need an npm package? It has absolutely nothing to do JavaScript.

I never really expected this project (or any of my projects) to go this far, so I haven't considered a Discord server yet. You can use the GDLauncher server for now in the gdlauncher support channel with the Ferium tag.

[Nukecraft5419]

Basically I'm creating a hybrid Launcher between the official Minecraft Launcher and MultiMC based on Electron and uses javascript/typescript I'm still deciding on this thing because there are 2 versions of electron then I'll use React and Chakra UI and I also have a client similar to Lunar and others I'm all about fabric with all mods not made by me and I wanted to make that only in my launcher there was the download via the ferium script

[RokeJulianLockhart]

@theRookieCoder, you'll get a lot more exposure if you manage to publish to

0. snap and
1. flatpak (at least for the GUI version)

since they support every Linux distribution except Android. Additionally, flatpak is the sole method of persistent installation of Fedora (Silverblue and Kinoite).

Ping my @RokeJulianLockhart if you respond. I'm not subscribed to this discussion.

[theRookieCoder]

I'm not all that familiar with Linux but aren't these for GUI desktop applications? Ferium is still CLI only and there aren't any plans for a GUI port yet.

But yeah your concern is valid, I find it frustrating too that there isn't an easy way to reach all (if not most) Linux users easily. I'm thinking of using Fedora and it pains me to not see my own software on it.

[ImperatorStorm]

Snap works for both cli and gui, but is jank in other ways.
Flatpak can work for CLI, but iirc it'll take additional user input

[soupglasses]

But yeah your concern is valid, I find it frustrating too that there isn't an easy way to reach all (if not most) Linux users easily. I'm thinking of using Fedora and it pains me to not see my own software on it.

One universal packaging method available to all distros right now is nix. Which on Fedora you can install trough a dnf package from here: https://github.com/nix-community/nix-installers

There is also the official method, which works well on other distros if not supported by nix-installers: https://nixos.org/download.html

Then running nix profile install nixpkgs#ferium should put it into your PATH 👍

[soupglasses]

A side note is that you can also run any software from nix with nix run nixpkgs#package-here without installing it to your system. Which is how i personally end up running ferium for updating my mods 😄

[theRookieCoder]

I've decided to convert this into a discussion as it didn't make sense being in the issue tracker (there are an infinite amount of package managers after all).

More importantly, I think the thread format is more suitable for the type of discussion that takes place here.

[RokeJulianLockhart]

@theRookieCoder, I disagree, because now I can't just be notified of issue closure. If I were you, I'd close the issue when the ones you intend to add are added, and then reopen when adding new packages.

Ping my @RokeJulianLockhart if you respond. I'm not subscribed to this discussion.

[theRookieCoder]

close the issue when the ones you intend to add are added, and then reopen when adding new packages

Well I feel like closing the issue when a package isn't being actively added would make it seem like I'm not open to being included in more package manager, not to mention bringing less attention to the issue.

Again, I think the threads feature far outweighs any disadvantages as it allows for much more organised dissussion.

[Loatchi]

I packaged ferium to work with Portage, the package manager for Gentoo and derivatives.

It is available in my overlay.

I wanted to know how do I submit it to this project ?
I'm new to how github release yaml work and repology.

Thanks for your amazing app !

[theRookieCoder]

Awesome! Thank you for creating this, I'll mention it in the readme installations subtopic when I get around to updating it.

Can I confirm an overlay in portage is like a homebrew tap or an apt PPA?
Is it possible to submit this directly to Gentoo Packages (https://packages.gentoo.org), and are tools like this welcomed? If you happen to know, could you let me know of the procedure for submitting it to the official repository?

[Loatchi]

An overlay is basically a third party repository for portage.

You can obviously submit a new package to the Gentoo Portage tree, high chances it will be welcomed properly. However it might take months before the package gets added to the actual git repository. An alternative that is advertised is the GURU project which is also an overlay that is maintained by other gentoo users.

Moreover, my overlay is already listed on overlays.gentoo.org (so is Guru obvisouly). So compiling ferium on Gentoo is fairly easy, as user maintened overlays are implemented nicely on Gentoo.

The niche thing with an overlay is the fact that it is portable, for example users coming from Funtoo (a Gentoo based distribution) could install ferium without having to add the entire Gentoo's portage tree as an overlay.

Thanks a lot for your amazing work on ferium !

[theRookieCoder]

Oh actually that sounds better than moving to the official Gentoo overlay. I think just sticking with this would be better!

[theRookieCoder]

I've added the package to the readme, can you have a look and let me know if I should change anything, like the installation commands. Is it possible for something like repology to determine the version present?

[Loatchi]

You've forgot the emaint sync -r loatchi. It makes sure that my cloned overlay is up to date and add it to portage's tree if it has just been enabled.

It should look like this:

eselect repository enable loatchi
emaint sync -r loatchi
emerge -av ferium

Appart from that, it is perfect !

[yoshiyoshyosh]

I have packaged and will maintain ferium for Void Linux.

https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/tree/master/srcpkgs/ferium

[theRookieCoder]

Cool that's great to see, I'll add it to the readme when I get around to updating it. Thanks a lot for your contribution!

[theRookieCoder]

I've added the package to the readme, can you have a look and let me know if the information there is acccurate?

[otter501]

I have requested it to be added to the chaotic-aur third party repository however on the ferium-gui and ferium

[theRookieCoder]

Oh so from what I understand, it will precompile builds based on the regular aur packages, correct?

What would be the difference for a user using chaotic-aur instead of the ferium*-bin aur packages which fetch from GitHub Releases? I suppose it's just a matter of who they trust??

[ST-DDT]

Winget added a "portable zip installer/portable app" type of package.

Do I have permission to add ferium to winget? You will likely have to add future versions (or automate the process for it) yourself though.
I have seen that gorilla-devs already have a package on there so you might want to do that yourself.

See here for an example on how this works: https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs/blob/master/manifests/h/Hashicorp/Terraform/1.7.1/Hashicorp.Terraform.installer.yaml

[ST-DDT]

Reviewed

[ST-DDT]

New PR: microsoft/winget-pkgs#137742

[ST-DDT]

Winget now has support for Ferium. 🎉

[ST-DDT]

I also created a new PR for the latest version 4.5.1: microsoft/winget-pkgs#139278

[ST-DDT]

For future updates you might want to use a GH-Action for that.

You could use tools such as https://github.com/vedantmgoyal2009/winget-releaser / https://github.com/marketplace/actions/winget-releaser for that.

I could create a PR for that, but you have to create the Tokens yourself, so I'm not sure how much help that would be.