How Bluefin deals with change in default installed apps

Bluefin
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Please help me understand how Bluefin deals with changes in installed default apps in the bluefin-dx:stable image for existing users.

Here is one example:
A while ago, there was a commit to introduce Flatpak org.gnome.FileRoller to be installed by default.
During my Bluefin testing on VM, I upgraded my Bluefin, but FileRoller was not added to the installed application list. However, when I did a fresh installation of Bluefin, FileRoller was an installed application.

My question is, does Bluefin want to respect my application list and userspace by not changing it after the installation when I do the upgrade?

If that’s the case, say, for instance, one app is left unmaintained or there is a better replacement for it upstream (similar to what happens to Evince and Paper or many others). Does that mean people who update their Bluefin are not going to see the changes unless they do the fresh install again?

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I can’t answer the other questions, but if you do a “ujust install-system-flatpaks” in the terminal, it will update you to the “current” recommended flatpaks, just like you had done a fresh install.

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In the beta days we had service units that would try to manage this for people but we decided it was too high touch to try to manage this.

The “right” way is that flatpak needs to manage the full app lifecycle - typically distros would do this. A start to this is managing installations: [Feature idea]: /etc/flatpak/preinstall.d · Issue #5579 · flatpak/flatpak · GitHub

Though this is just the start, we don’t really have a way to have a “fully managed” flatpak install, which should be the goal. We feel it’s best to help out this way instead of messing around with your apps ourselves.

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@j0rge One thing I would like to throw 5 cents on, is your comment here:

We’ve accidentally installed both sets and it’s not a fun thing to fix for less experienced users. So far it seems that going system-only or user-only is a matter of taste and hybrid approaches also have their pros and cons.

I always assumed that the system flatpaks are installed and managed by the distro. So if there is a flatpak A present and you decide in the next version to remove it, the app would “disappear” on update.

However, if I install the same app A as a user flatpak, it should remain untouched. User-installed flatpaks should remain until they are manually uninstalled. It would be nice if ujust update gets you the latest version of both, it should never add/remove user flatpaks.

In all this, I’ve no idea what happens if you try both. Not sure if having the same flatpak as user/system is allowed, but I would expect if I am using a flatpak B as a user install (which is not present in Bluefin’s default system ones) and one day you decide to add it, then it would be installed as a system flatpak as well (alongside the user one).

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Unfortunately system flatpaks are not managed by the distro. They live on the running system side of the boundary.

Instead they are just simply flatpaks that are available to all users.

We had a service for managing these previously; however, that also meant reinstalling them if a user removed them.

Right now by default you get the flatpaks that were installed when you installed your machine. You can get the newest list (and again it won’t remove other ones) by using the ujust recipe.

Bluefin-cli is also in a similar state, though since that one is opt-in we may trigger a refresh on those.

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