Technical Notes

Manpages - flatpak-build-export.1

NAME

flatpak-build-export - Create a repository from a build directory

SYNOPSIS

flatpak build-export [OPTION…] LOCATION DIRECTORY [BRANCH]

DESCRIPTION

Creates or updates a repository with an application build. LOCATION is the location of the repository. DIRECTORY must be a finalized build directory. If BRANCH is not specified, it is assumed to be "master".

If LOCATION exists, it is assumed to be an OSTree repository, otherwise a new OSTree repository is created at this location. The repository can be inspected with the ostree tool.

The contents of DIRECTORY are committed on the branch with name app/APPNAME/ARCH/BRANCH, where ARCH is the architecture of the runtime that the application is using. A commit filter is used to enforce that only the contents of the files/ and export/ subdirectories and the metadata file are included in the commit, anything else is ignored.

When exporting a flatpak to be published to the internet, –collection-id=COLLECTION-ID should be specified as a globally unique reverse DNS value to identify the collection of flatpaks this will be added to. Setting a globally unique collection ID allows the apps in the repository to be shared over peer to peer systems without needing further configuration.

The build-update-repo command should be used to update repository metadata whenever application builds are added to a repository.

OPTIONS

The following options are understood:

-h, –help

Show help options and exit.

-s, –subject=SUBJECT

One line subject for the commit message.

-b, –body=BODY

Full description for the commit message.

–collection-id=COLLECTION-ID

Set as the collection ID of the repository. Setting a globally unique collection ID allows the apps in the repository to be shared over peer to peer systems without needing further configuration. If exporting to an existing repository, the collection ID must match the existing configured collection ID for that repository.

–subset=SUBSET

Mark the commit to be included in the named subset. This will cause the commit to be put in the named subset summary (in addition to the main one), allowing users to see only this subset instead of the whole repo.

–arch=ARCH

Specify the architecture component of the branch to export. Only host compatible architectures can be specified; see flatpak –supported-arches for valid values.

–exclude=PATTERN

Exclude files matching PATTERN from the commit. This option can be used multiple times.

–include=PATTERN

Dont exclude files matching PATTERN from the commit, even if they match the –exclude patterns. This option can be used multiple times.

–metadata=FILENAME

Use the specified filename as metadata in the exported app instead of the default file (called metadata). This is useful if you want to commit multiple things from a single build tree, typically used in combination with –files and –exclude.

–files=SUBDIR

Use the files in the specified subdirectory as the file contents, rather than the regular files directory.

–timestamp=DATE

Use the specified ISO 8601 formatted date or NOW, for the current time, in the commit metadata and, if –update-appstream is used, the appstream data.

–end-of-life=REASON

Mark the build as end-of-life. REASON is a message that may be shown to users installing this build.

–end-of-life-rebase=ID

Mark the build as end-of-life. Unlike –end-of-life, this one takes an ID that supersedes the current one. By the users request, the application data may be preserved for the new application.

–disable-fsync

Dont fsync when writing to the repository. This can result in data loss in exceptional situations, but can improve performance when working with temporary or test repositories.

–update-appstream

Update the appstream branch after the build.

–no-update-summary

Dont update the summary file after the new commit is added. This means the repository will not be useful for serving over http until build-update-repo has been run. This is useful is you want to do multiple repo operations before finally updating the summary.

–gpg-sign=KEYID

Sign the commit with this GPG key. This option can be used multiple times.

–gpg-homedir=PATH

GPG Homedir to use when looking for keyrings

-r, –runtime

Export a runtime instead of an app (this uses the usr subdir as files).

-v, –verbose

Print debug information during command processing.

–ostree-verbose

Print OSTree debug information during command processing.

EXAMPLES

$ flatpak build-export ~/repos/gnome-calculator/ ~/build/gnome-calculator/ org.gnome.Calculator

Commit: 9d0044ea480297114d03aec85c3d7ae3779438f9d2cb69d717fb54237acacb8c
Metadata Total: 605
Metadata Written: 5
Content Total: 1174
Content Written: 1
Content Bytes Written: 305

SEE ALSO

*ostree*(1), *flatpak*(1), *flatpak-build-init*(1), *flatpak-build*(1), *flatpak-build-finish*(1), *flatpak-build-sign*(1), *flatpak-build-update-repo*(1)