Feasibility of using upstream electron similar to AUR package

[anthr76]

Hello

ArchLinux AUR has seemed to workaround some discord's shortcomings with electron/screen sharing with pipewire etc.

They're using the system's electron. Is it possible we can do something like that with the flatpak?

They unpack the asar

https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=discord_arch_electron#n36

  install -d "$pkgdir"/usr/lib/$_pkgname

  # HACKS FOR SYSTEM ELECTRON
  asar e Discord/resources/app.asar Discord/resources/app
  rm Discord/resources/app.asar
  sed -i "s|process.resourcesPath|'/usr/lib/$_pkgname'|" Discord/resources/app/app_bootstrap/buildInfo.js
  sed -i "s|exeDir,|'/usr/share/pixmaps',|" Discord/resources/app/app_bootstrap/autoStart/linux.js
  asar p Discord/resources/app Discord/resources/app.asar --unpack-dir '**'
  rm -rf Discord/resources/app

I have not tested myself but I have read/ and heard doing something like this allows you to use Pipewire and screen share properly

[carlocastoldi]

As far as I tested discord_arch_electron doesn't make it possible to screenshare using pipewire. If you hope to enable screensharing with this proposal, I highly doubt it will.

P.S. tested with:

❯ cat /usr/bin/discord
#!/bin/sh
exec electron --enable-features=WebRTCPipeWireCapturer --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --enable-gpu --ozone-platform=wayland /usr/lib/discord/app.asar $@

[lionirdeadman]

I believe I've said this before but not sure where. Doing this might count as a client modification and I don't want to cross that line.

[SystemlessDev]

I'm necroposting a bit but doing this would absolutely be considered a client mod. Any modifications to discord, or any of its components, is against their tos.

[anthr76]

I mean the options Discord gives it's paying Linux customers are abysmal but if upstream has no desire I'm going to go ahead and close the issue.

[lionirdeadman]

I still believe that it would be a violation but I'd like to keep this open because I've sent an email about it to Discord to see if this breaks their policies or not.

[anthr76]

Thanks! I'll keep an eye and would be happy to help if we get a response back.. FWIW I wonder what thier views are on flatpak itself considering it's not officially distrusted by them.

[lionirdeadman]

We already contacted them previously to allow the distribution of the binary. I recently emailed them about how they handled updates but they said their team and the infra was too small to do the things I wanted (either email me or check flatpak for updates instead of their current prompt)

[guihkx]

In recent times, Discord has greatly improved on this specific scenario.

For instance, Discord 0.0.70 (released yesterday), already includes Electron 32.0.0 (with Chromium 128), which is the most recent stable version of Electron today.

For that reason, my personal opinion is that we don't need this anymore. If any collaborator disagrees, feel free to re-open.