Skip to main content

Flatpak Support in Brewfiles

· 3 min read
Jorge O. Castro
Jorge O. Castro
Director of Dinosaurs

Flatpak support in Brewfiles is here! You can now manage your Flatpak applications alongside your Homebrew formulae, casks, and other dependencies in a single Brewfile. This is thanks to the amazing work by Ahmed Adan (Donate), who worked with upstream to land this feature.

What's New​

Homebrew Bundle now supports Flatpak packages on Linux. This means you can declare your Flatpak applications in your Brewfile and have them installed automatically with brew bundle.

Note from Jorge: I haven't played with this feature yet but announcing it so we can get feedback right away.

Basic Usage​

Add Flatpak packages to your Brewfile using the flatpak directive:

# Brewfile
brew "neovim"
flatpak "com.spotify.Client"
flatpak "com.visualstudio.code"

Then run:

brew bundle

Remote Support​

Homebrew Bundle supports three ways to interact with Flatpak remotes:

Default Remote (Flathub)​

For packages from Flathub (the default), just specify the app ID. Most of us will use it this way:

flatpak "com.spotify.Client"

URL Remote​

For packages from other repositories, specify the remote URL:

flatpak "org.godotengine.Godot", remote: "https://dl.flathub.org/beta-repo/"

Named Remote with URL​

For shared remotes that you want to reuse across multiple packages:

flatpak "org.godotengine.Godot", remote: "flathub-beta", url: "https://dl.flathub.org/beta-repo/"
flatpak "io.github.dvlv.boxbuddyrs", remote: "flathub-beta"

Commands​

All the standard brew bundle commands work with Flatpak:

  • brew bundle - Install Flatpak packages from your Brewfile
  • brew bundle dump - Export your installed Flatpak packages to a Brewfile
  • brew bundle cleanup - Remove Flatpak packages not in your Brewfile
  • brew bundle check - Verify all Flatpak packages are installed
  • brew bundle list --flatpak - List Flatpak packages in your Brewfile

Check out the brew bundle documentation for more information.

Dump Options​

# Include Flatpak packages when dumping (default on Linux)
brew bundle dump

# Exclude Flatpak packages
brew bundle dump --no-flatpak

# List only Flatpak packages
brew bundle list --flatpak

Why This Matters for Bluefin​

This feature allows Bluefin users to maintain a single Brewfile that manages:

  • Command-line and GUI applications in one file
  • Lightweight gitops between all of your machines
  • Paves the wave for better Homebrew/Flatpak integration

The huge community benefit is the shareability of a list-o-files. You can give your friend the hookup, and in fact many of Bluefin's "features" are just us shipping our own Brewfiles. For you experts out there this likely just simplifies something you probably already have. And for those of you just starting your command line spec tree it's a nice milestone to hit: "I can get a new install up and running in 10 minutes". There's lots of ways to do this, but this is an easy one. 😄

Woo! We feel that this is a nice complement to devcontainers, providing even more flexibility to your workflows!

How does it work in practice?​

You're going to have to tell me, I am on holiday in the German countryside, but this feature is super exciting and I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback!

Refer to the Homebrew Bundle documentation for more!

References​

Also Check Out​

Speaking about "Easiest way to get a clean install in 10 minutes", SaveDesktop is the nice GUI way to do this. You'll always find it in Bluefin's Curated section in the Bazaar app store. (Tell your friends!)

Discussion​