Add guides for common types of apps

[allanday]

Since flatpak usage varies according to the type of app someone is building, we ought to ensure that there is documentation for the most common app types. The documentation plan suggests the following:

• Python
• Electron
• Vala
• Java (see Bring back the bundling a java app tutorial #17)
• Ruby/gems

For each of these, we probably want:

• Guidance on how each one differs from the standard build methods
• Explain how to use any special tools
• Flag any quirks
• Point to examples

[TingPing]

Some simple examples:

        {
            "name": "quaternion",
            "buildsystem": "cmake-ninja",
            "builddir": true,
            "config-opts": [
              "-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release"
            ],
            "sources": [
                {
                    "type": "git",
                    "url": "git://github.com/QMatrixClient/Quaternion.git",
                    "branch": "v0.0.5",
                    "commit": "f6ae506c14acb223bdc196124efd4f35d6ffa2bb"
                }
            ]
        }

Note that cmake-ninja is simply a faster variant of cmake when it works (usually)

   {
      "name": "hexchat",
      "buildsystem": "meson",
      "config-opts": [
        "--buildtype=release"
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "type": "archive",
          "url": "https://dl.hexchat.net/hexchat/hexchat-2.14.1.tar.xz",
          "sha256": "b032e4bcebe2229f87047439979a1246ddcbf599e7e538baa3f2abfac9a003a2"
        }
      ]
    }

[cpba]

I've been looking for an application to serve as a basis for the python tutorial, but the issue I have realised is that if the app already uses a buildsystem such as meson, building it is no different than any other c/c++ app.

What's different is building python dependencies, these usually must be built using the simple buildsystem and they often have other dependencies of their own, meriting the use of flatpak-pip-generator.

Should we have a tutorial on how to build python modules and how to use flatpak-pip-generator rather than a tutorial on a whole python app?

[TingPing]

@cpba Yes showing python dependencies would be very helpful.

[cpba]

@allanday Would something along these lines be acceptable?

https://gist.github.com/cpba/9ec5e95b1f91950aa931d7a62d35f43d

I'm not completely sure about some of the claims I make, it would benefit from some fact checking.

[allanday]

This looks great @cpba ! I've created a structure to drop language-specific guides into, including an empty page for the Python guide. Do you want to push your work there?

[cpba]

@allanday I do. I've made some changes following the suggestions in the gist and sent a pull request.

[allanday]

@allanday I do. I've made some changes following the suggestions in the gist and sent a pull request.

Thanks, I've merged this into the guides branch and made some changes. I hope these are OK. Thanks again, and don't hesitate to propose changes of your own.

I'll maybe wait until we have another guide in place before doing a PR for the branch.

[cpba]

@allanday I cleaned up my electron tutorial a bit: https://github.com/cpba/flatpak-manifests/blob/master/doc-drafts/electron-tutorial.md

If you think it's something that would work as a guide I'll try to fix it up a bit more and send a pull request.

[allanday]

@allanday I cleaned up my electron tutorial a bit: https://github.com/cpba/flatpak-manifests/blob/master/doc-drafts/electron-tutorial.md

This looks excellent, @cpba ! There are some style changes I'd like to make, but the content is really great.

It would be good to host the example app somewhere more official, perhaps under flatpak.

[cpba]

It would be good to host the example app somewhere more official, perhaps under flatpak.

@allanday I've made a barebones electron app with some flatpak branding to use with the tutorial:

https://github.com/cpba/electrondemo

Can you create a repo for me so that I can import it? I'm not in the flatpak group.

[allanday]

I've merged @cpba's electron tutorial into the guides branch. There were some questions about whether the technical recommendations are correct on IRC and it would be good to have that confirmed one way or another.