Add org.godotengine.godot.BaseApp 4.3 in appcenter repo

[SubhadeepJasu]

Problem

This is for adding Sanctify in AppCenter. This requires org.godotengine.godot.BaseApp 4.3 (which is also available on the Flathub repo). Without that the game can't be built in the flatpak pipeline using appcenter repo.

Proposal

Keeping major versions of Godot base app (latest stable being 4.3) in the repo will help release and maintain godot games on AppCenter.

Prior Art (Optional)

Flathub Repo has this base app support.

[davidmhewitt]

This should be possible in theory if we built some GitHub actions somewhere to either sync these from Flathub to our remote, or build them from source and then push them.

But, I've decided to put this on hold for now since it seems there's a few comments in issues on the Flathub repos that suggest that using the BaseApp might not be the best option. [1] [2]

It sounds like the biggest issue is that even patch releases of Godot may not be compatible with .pck files built by other patch releases.

So for example, you could build your .pck file with 4.3.0, use the 4.3 base app in your manifest and release your game. Then Godot would release 4.3.1 and we (or Flathub) would update the base app to 4.3.1, which would still live on the 4.3 branch, and it would potentially break your game until you re-released with a new .pck file built with 4.3.1.

It increases build times, but it seems like a much better idea to build the specific version of Godot you want to use in your Flatpak manifest, use that to build your .pck file and then ship that version of Godot and the built .pck file together to ensure compatibility.

You now have 2 PRs on your repo to choose from to achieve this because @cassidyjames was working on it at the same time as me 😆

[SubhadeepJasu]

Aaa, I see. Thanks a lot to you both for helping me with this. But yeah the concern regarding the various point releases of Godot being incompatible with pck files is a real issue.

[danirabbit]

Is this still relevant? I think we went another direction for publishing Godot games no?

[SubhadeepJasu]

Yes, I will close this. The current solution works.