Flatpak Gets New FreeDesktop SDK 18.08 Runtime

Flatpak now has access to an updated FreeDesktop SDK runtime that is built on their new BuildStream build system rather than Yocto and has other improvements.

Flatpak lead developer and Red Hat employee Alexander Larsson has outlined this new runtime option for Flatpak, the FreeDesktop SDK 18.08 release. The FreeDesktop Runtime ends up being used by most Flatpak packaged applications out there.

The new 18.08 run-time was announced on Friday. Eventually this new run-time will be picked up by the Flatpak GNOME run-time as well. This run-time is also vetted using the Gitlab continuous integration infrastructure for all major architectures, library directories follow multi-arch conventions, Python 2 support is in the process of being phased out, and all components are updated against their latest stable versions.

The FreeDesktop SDK Run-time consists of Python 3.7.0 (Python 2.7.15, albeit the last SDK release with it), SDL 2.0.8, SQLite 3.24, Vulkan 1.1.73, all the latest Xorg libraries, OpenSSL 1.0.2o, Meson 0.47.1, LLVM 6.0, VDPAU 0.7.4, Mesa 18.1.4, and a wealth of other up-to-date libraries as outlined here.