Bug 486678 - some --user flatpaks have the author name as name instead
Summary: some --user flatpaks have the author name as name instead
Status: RESOLVED UPSTREAM
Alias: None
Product: systemsettings
Classification: Applications
Component: kcm_flatpak (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: 6.0.4
Platform: Fedora RPMs Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL: https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/is...
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2024-05-06 17:57 UTC by Henning
Modified: 2024-05-09 19:38 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments
screenshot of the flatpak app list displaying author names instead. (60.36 KB, image/jpeg)
2024-05-06 17:57 UTC, Henning
Details

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Henning 2024-05-06 17:57:22 UTC
Created attachment 169245 [details]
screenshot of the flatpak app list displaying author names instead.

I suppose systemsettings uses "flatpak info tld.app.id" to get the name

Some apps have the name falsely set, while it appears correctly in the desktop entry.

This causes stuff like "the GIMP team" or "the inkscape community" to be shown as the name, instead of the correct one.

I suppose the way of fetching the name is not the best? I remember it worked well some versions ago, on Plasma 5. So I suppose there already was a change in fetching the name.

An alternative would be to always use the third element of the app id.

It could also just be an issue with upstream naming, as it seems a lot of people are putting their author name where the app name should be.

I attach a screenshot just for completeness.
Comment 1 Henning 2024-05-06 17:59:28 UTC
An alternative would also be to use the desktop entry

cat $HOME/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share/applications/tld.app.id.desktop

And then grep the name in the correct language and cut after the '='
Comment 2 Nate Graham 2024-05-06 21:54:45 UTC
This is unfortunately a bug in Flatpak itself. You can see the same thing in `flatpak list` run in a terminal window.
Comment 4 Nate Graham 2024-05-09 18:05:47 UTC
Nice, thanks for finding that. I knew there was a bug report in there somewhere but I had lost track of it.

I can confirm that this local workaround works if you're using the fixed version of flatpak:

list=$(flatpak list --app --columns=application)

for app in $list
	do
		flatpak install --user --reinstall -y "$app"
done
Comment 5 Henning 2024-05-09 19:38:13 UTC
this is fixed with flatpak 1.15.8

background: the parser used the first occurrence of "name" in the metadata, and "developer name" occurs first. So it took that.

I wouldnt recommend my script XD that made plasma crash.

Just reinstall the affected apps, solved it for me. Note that the reinstall will not remove any data. You can also use it to change flatpak apps from --user to --system. 

--user flatpak apps dont require permissions to manage. If you have a system with some kind of child safety rules, using an unprivileged user and system flatpaks will make more sense. system flatpaks are the default.