Speaking of installation problems, downloading a random binary that creates random files in ~ is pretty 1990's, how about a Flatpak package for the itch app?
downloading a random binary that creates random files in ~ is pretty 1990's
The idea may be old, and yet the execution is definitely modern!
itch-setup is not a self-extracting file, it validates the version folder, comparing it against a signature, healing files that are missing.
For initial install, all files are missing, so it extracts them all (it does so without storing the archive itself on disk - extraction is done on-the-fly, while it's being downloaded). For corrupted installations, it just repairs the files that need to be repaired. For upgrades, it applies optimized patches (the same software is used both for installation and updates).
Also, it's all open-source (see Github repo), and the same codebase runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS - except for the interface, which is native to each OS, of course. On top of that, it allows the app to self-update seamlessly on all three platforms.
I've wrestled with distro-specific packages (and even new, "self-contained", "sandboxed" formats like AppImage, Flatpak, Snap) before, but at that time we don't have the resources to support it. Investing a few months of part-time work on our own unified setup solution is already a small miracle in itself :)
If we end up shipping a Flatpak or Snap, it'll be for itch-setup, which will in turn install the itch app. It's not in my TODO list for the immediate future though!
Hey Michael,
I'm just now seeing your other message, which seems to be a relatively trivial itch-setup bug. I'll reply to your other thread about it!
Just want to chime in on this, while I know it's not high on your priority list it would be great to see a distro-agnostic Flatpak package
I'm a developer on Neverware's CloudReady (neverware.com) which is a fork of ChromiumOS aimed at running on more generic hardware than just Chromebooks. We've added Flatpak support and integrated it with the ChromiumOS UI, and I've been doing all of my gaming lately via the Steam Flatpak. It would be great to get Itch.io as well.
Since it's ChromiumOS we don't ship with a package manager so we can't make use of the deb/rpm, so it would be great to have Itch in a Flatpak :)
Still not on our roadmap. The official installer from https://itch.io/app should happily run on most distributions. If it doesn't, open an issue!
The current distro packages available for itch all rely on itch-setup, so there's no need to update all of them when a new version is out.