Building Flatpaks Locally

I like to run my Linux as an operating system, so I usually resort to toolbox for packages and development. However flatpak-builder is distributed as a flatpak itself, so here's how you can go about building flatpaks yourself for when GNOME Nighlies are not enough.

On GNOME OS, some developer tools like git and toolbox are in the base image.

Installing flatpak-builder

flatpak-builder isn't part of base OS though. It is distributed on Flathub as org.flatpak.Builder. Install it like any other Flatpak:

flatpak install flathub org.flatpak.Builder

Building and Installing Locally

Here's how I build Shaper, an icon designer for GNOME symbolics.

flatpak run --command=flatpak-builder \
org.flatpak.Builder --user --install \
--force-clean build-dir org.gnome.design.Shaper.json

And that's it!

Developer extension

There are some extra tools for development available for GNOME OS. You get them by enabling the developer system extension:

sudo updatectl enable devel --now

So instead of installing the flatpak, you get flatpak-builder as a utility.