GNOME OS Developers Devise "Toolpak" — a Flatpak for Tools

GNOME developer Jordan Petridis has published a blog post introducing the wider community to the plans for Toolpak, a new piece of the GNOME OS puzzle.

The idea is for Toolpak to become for tools what Flatpak already is for graphical applications. Flatpak taught Linux users to think in terms of self-contained, distribution-independent bundles that can be installed on top of any base system. Toolpak proposes to extend that same philosophy to tools — the utilities and programs relied on primarily by developers and power users.

The timing reflects the growing popularity of immutable operating system images, a category that includes GNOME OS itself. On such systems the base image is read-only, which complicates the usual habits of installing packages and tailoring one's environment. Toolpak is meant to fill that gap, offering a convenient way to add the tools you need without disturbing the integrity of the underlying system.

The full details of the initiative are laid out in Petridis's blog post. For now the effort is at the stage of a concept and stated plans rather than a finished product.

Source: Phoronix