Flatpak 1.15 Released With Initial Meson Build System Support

Flatpak 1.15 was released on Monday as the newest test release for this increasingly used open-source sandboxing and app distribution tech.

New with Flatpak 1.15.0 is allowing it to be built under the popular Meson build system as an alternative to Autotools. Flatpak developers are already looking at phasing out the Autotools build system support either during this current 1.15 unstable cycle or for 1.17.

Flatpak 1.15 also now allows the modify_ldt system call as part of "--allow=multiarch" usage in order to support running 16-bit executables with some versions of Wine. The lack of modify_ldt system call access was preventing Wine from running within Flatpak in some configurations. However, modify_ldt presents the possibility of information leakage and Flatpak developers acknowledge the possibility of it increasing the attack surface. The modify_ldt system call is used for reading/writing to the local descriptor table (LDT) of a process.

Flatpak 1.15 also now shares the GSSPROXY socket for acting like a portal for Kerberos authentication, a "httpbackend" variable for programs like GNOME Software to detect compatibility with libflatpak, and a variety of bug fixes.

Downloads and more details on the Flatpak 1.15 development release via GitHub.