The subject of disk space
and flatpaks came up in the most recent
workstation meeting, and I'd like to separately discuss that
in this
thread before creating a flatpak issue.
The full log:
https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/teams/workstation/workstation.2019-10-28-13.00.log.html
Excerpts:
13:16:07 <langdon> allocating enough disk if you have
your drive
sliced up is tough
13:16:36 <Son_Goku> and yeah, the disk space issue is
a huge problem
...
13:16:47 <kalev> "the disk space issue" ?
13:16:58 <otaylor> Son_Goku: why would disk space be
an issue?
flatpaks store data in $HOME
...
13:17:19 <langdon> that's the problem.. normally I
have a "games disk"
13:17:27 <Son_Goku> likewise
Neither sysroot nor $HOME fits the above use case, where the
user
wants to store games on a separate volume entirely. And
another use
case is where it's desirable to use the much larger /home
volume
storage pool, but permit sharing of apps among users.
Could there be a /home/share/flatpak with the appropriate
permissions,
that meets both use case requirements?
Alternatively, Workstation could do what Silverblue does,
with
/var/home bind mounted to /home - and therefore system and
user
flatpaks go on the same volume. But there should also be a
way to set
the default location for flatpak files. Users wanting a
games volume
could bind mount it to /var/lib/flatpak, but then they need
a way to
set system as the default location instead of users.
If you have your disk carved up in particular ways, you
can just create a custom
flatpak installation wherever you need it, See
flatpak-installation(5). You can of
course bind mount things around behind flatpaks back, but
I think a custom
installation is cleaner and already supported.
I don't think there is a need to set the default location
for 'flatpak files',
any more than there is a need to set a default location
for 'rpm files'.