I not a dev and canāt explain the technical nuances in detail. But Iāve been using Linux long enough to know that you canāt just provide a deb that will run on any distro. The distros maintain the packages and the dependencies and you as a software vendor have no direct influence on that. So either you provide a 'zillion repos for every possible distro, or you leave it up to the maintainers of the distro to package your product.
And that is literally one of the main reasons (besides monetization) why solutions like Snap or Flatpak are pushed so much. And itās also one of the main reasons why you rarely see any commercial software on Linux. And the few that exist only support a few distributions and you often have to use a rather specific release, in order to get support from the vendor.
Nobody wants to run it on any distro. Just the latest stable version of 2 or 3 most popular distribution would be enough (i.e. debian, ubuntu, fedora). Just recently I installed Citrix client (which btw is commercial software, but distributed free). There are 3 versions: ādebā for current debian/ubuntu and derivatives, rpm for redhat/suse (runs on fedora too), and tgz. Thatās all, and thatās enough.
I think NC is not software for home-users only anymore. I aims on government, enterprises, education too (as we can see on NC webpage). So even NC-client must get corresponding level of attention. IMHO having NC-client only as appimage is a serious fault, as it is unsuitable for restricted multi-user entvirnoments.
Iām not saying your completely wrong. But it is what it isā¦ I certainly wouldnāt mind if they would directly provide their client for .e.g. Fedora, which Iām using on my laptop, although Fedora does upgrade it often enough. And I donāt sync anymore on my laptop anyways. I just use the Nextcloud integration on GNOME or the browser when Iām on the road.
Also, in 10 years, sync clients will probably no longer be needed because, with a few exceptions, everything will run in a web browser. The few applications that still have to run locally will run in containers on immutable systems. Multi-user on local devices will no longer be needed in normal office environments; instead, each employee will have his or her own personal device. A fixed workplace, with a desktop PC attached to it, is already a thing of the past in many companies.
My intention is not to judge all this, I just say what I see and in what direction I think it goes.
Iām sure these entities are able to figure something out, and I guess they do have support contracts. For the rest of us, we have to be aware that everything is completely free and open source. So nobody is stopping us to maintain such a repo by ourselfs. Or we could just use a distro that is better suited to our needs. if you need current software without sacrificing too much stability, I can recommend Fedora.
Also, I still get feeling that itās not your company that has an issue with this, but you personally, and that these issues would disappear if you would just use the device and the OS your company is providing
Anyways, I canāt add anything meaningful to the subject anymore, so Iām out here.
Maybe I shouldnāt say anything since Iām not a software developer and donāt know much about Linux software packaging. But canāt you use check-install to build a .deb from source? I have done that with some other stuff.
because this thread was never about how to do something, it was about how to get something
Beside of that you would still have to meet all the dependencies, and then do it again every time when there is a new release. And If the dependencies are met you could as well use the already existing deb.
There are many tools and scripts. The missing parts you write yourself.
However, the easiest way is to build from source in /usr/local, with git checkout, checking the dependencies with a possible upgrade and replacing the binaries.
Those steps are always the same, thus you only have to sum it up in a script and you are ready.
I think at best that statement is open to some discussion.
I personally find typing āapt install packageā to be considerably easier than chasing down dependencies that this distro calls something completely different than that distro.
Not everyone does such things routinely, and it can become time-consuming very quickly. For example, Iām fairly certain I could manage to build it, but only with some amount of trial and error, and then I would have to figure it out again when itās time to upgrade. Compared to a .deb which would take care of everything along with the rest of my system updates.
That being said, if the topic at hand is a corporate environment as per OP, then this is the kind of thing where it would be worthwhile for the IT dept to build their own deb with something like check-install, and then be able to use that deb on the rest of the computers that have the same OS which is presumably most or all.
I was using 3.1.1 from debian 11 (bullseye), but it doesnāt work with E2EE, so I built the client by myself. This solution works for me. Iāve written a short tutorial, maybe it helps others. Nextcloud Desktop Client for the Raspberry Pi | worldwide
