Desktop Flatpak Releases

Desktop Flatpak Releases#

Flatpak is a package format that targets to support every Linux distribution. We’ve made Firefox publicly available on https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.mozilla.firefox since Firefox 74.0.

Channels used#

As of September, 2020 we build and publish two flatpaks: - mozilla-beta flatpak that is published to the Flathub beta channel. This does not have an UI and is used by ~1K users. It’s mainly for testing purposes - mozilla-release flatpak that is published to the Flathub stable channel. This is the main flatpak that users get.

The flatpak store (Flathub) comes with the concept of tracks (à la Google Play Store). Release promotion automatically uploads to these tracks:

Brand name

Track

Notes

Firefox

stable

Automatically shipped from mozilla-release

Firefox beta

beta

Automatically shipped from mozilla-beta

Firefox Developer Edition

N/A

Not supported yet

Firefox Nightly

N/A

Not supported yet

Firefox ESR

N/A

Not supported yet

Changes to Flatpak via web interface#

As of September 2020, the Flatpak doesn’t have a formal UI to make changes to the flatpaks via authorized credentials. Most of the applications shipped to Flathub are done so as part of the Flathub’s CI on Github. Firefox is among the very few applications that are being shipped from our automation via Flathub’s API.

For any urgent changes, Flathub administrators have leverage and can be contacted to help. Details on how to contact them ca be found in the private repo within the flathub-store.txt file.

Refresh Flathub credentials#

In order to publish to both channels, we use the pushflatpak scriptworker. The procedure to push is the same for both channels.

Credentials refreshes are done through flathub.org. To rotate, do the following:

  1. Visit https://flathub.org/en/apps/manage/org.mozilla.firefox, sign in with GitHub credentials.

  2. Near the bottom of the page, click “New beta token” or “New stable token” (depending on which you’re rotating).

  3. In the modal that pops up, use a name such as “pushflatpak-gecko-beta-20260529”. Allow all scopes (Create/access, upload, publish, view).

  4. Click “Create Token”

  5. Copy the token, run it through echo -n “…” | base64 -w0 paste it into the appropriate place in the pushflatpak sops

  6. Commit the updated file

  7. Deploy pushflatpak to production to pick up the change.