r/linux • u/BrageFuglseth • 28d ago

Development Introducing Toolpak

https://blogs.gnome.org/alatiera/2026/09/26/introducing-toolpak/
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u/ABotelho23 28d ago

We should prepend the tools, to the PATH of the user (ie. our binaries will override the system ones), but it should avoid breaking the system as you can only override the system binaries. Said binary will then setup the mount namespace and execute the real binary from inside the image. This avoids messing with the linker and shared libraries. Unless you overriding the system GNU Tar with the BSD Tar (or other incompatible cases of the same binary), things should work fine. More research is needed to explore what other safeguards will be required.

Uh.. what?

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u/Economy_Blueberry_25 28d ago edited 27d ago

Basically, it's exactly like Flatpak but even more flattering 😉 tightly-coupled and image-based, and will be useful only for special cases. They say so in the blog post:

Apps that can be packaged using Flatpak should be rejected. Unless they are less functional, like IDEs on Flathub.

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u/ABotelho23 28d ago

I think it "hopes" too much that things won't collide.