Create a container (with Flatpak for example)
@swilmet
Submitted by Sébastien Wilmet Link to original bug (#772606)
Description
I tried to create a Flatpak, see the wip/flatpak branch:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/latexila/commit/?h=wip/flatpak
As said in the commit message: There is a problem, LaTeX (TeX Live) is not installed inside the sandbox. LaTeXila launches a GSubprocess with a latex command. See this thread:
"Flatpak and LaTeX" https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg-app/2016-June/000255.html
An interesting addition in Flatpak 0.6.10:
A new dbus request "HostCommand" has been added to org.freedesktop.Flatpak. This lets you run any command on the host, and is therefore clearly not sandboxed, so access to this should be limited. However, it is very useful if you're using flatpak mainly as a distribution mechanism, for a non-sandboxed application.
But it needs code modification in latexila to make it work (or maybe a GSubprocess flag can be added in GIO to launch the command on the host).
Or instead of using Flatpak, another container system could be used, like systemd-nspawn. See the following article for a way to create a systemd-nspawn container for a LaTeX application: https://ramsdenj.com/2016/09/23/containerizing-graphical-applications-on-linux-with-systemd-nspawn.html