I’m admittedly yelling at cloud a bit here, but I like package managers just fine. I don’t want to have to have a plurality of software management tools. However, I also don’t want to be caught off guard in the future if applications I rely on begin releasing exclusively with flatpak.
I don’t develop distributed applications, but Im not understanding how it simplifies dependency management. Isn’t it just shifting the work into the app bundle? Stuff still has to be updated or replaced all the time, right?
Don’t maintainers have to release new bundles if they contain dependencies with vulnerabilities?
Is it because developers are often using dependencies that are ahead of release versions?
Also, how is it so much better than images for your applications on Docker Hub?
Never say never, I guess, but nothing about flatpak really appeals to my instincts. I really just want to know if it’s something I should adopt, or if I can continue to blissfully ignore.
The AUR is a different kettle of fish entirely, though. I do see your point, but the AUR is solving a problem common to all distros; hosting a repository for applications that there isn’t willingness or capacity to host in the official binary repos.
Installation, removal, dependency management, etc are all still handled by pacman. As others have pointed out there are great tools available to aid in AUR usability. My favorite is aurutils.