Revolt

Revolt is a small application which wraps Element to provide better integration with desktop environments in general, and GNOME in particular:

• Having Element as a “standalone” application with its own window, launcher, icon, etc. instead of it living in a browser tab.
• Persistent notifications (for desktop environments supporting them, i.e. GNOME). Notifications are automatically prevented when the Revolt window is focused.
• Status icon for desktop environment which have a tray bar applet (XFCE, Budgie, likely many others).

Installation

The recommended installation method is to use Flatpak. Starting with version 0.6.13 using a single command is enough (if you want to intall in you user directory, add --user to the command):

flatpak install --from https://flatpak.perezdecastro.org/revolt.flatpakref

If your Flatpak version is older than 0.6.13, use the following commands instead:

wget https://flatpak.perezdecastro.org/revolt.flatpakref
flatpak install --from revolt.flatpakref
rm revolt.flatpakref

Once installed, updates will be installed automatically when using flatpak update.

You can also download the .flatpakref file and double-click on it to have GNOME Software install the application. GNOME Software will also notify you of updates and give you the option to install them.

Portal Helpers

IMPORTANT: Many distributions do not install the XDG helper programs for the sandboxed applications, which are needed for some features to work. Please install them using your distribution's package manager:

• Debian: xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.
• Arch Linux: xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.
• Fedora: xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.

Some features, remarkably the desktop notifications, will not work without the portal helpers.

GNOME Runtime

Revolt uses the GNOME Flatpak runtime. Depending on the version of Flatpak installed on your system, you may need to install it manually. You can check whether the runtime is missing by trying to run Revolt in a terminal:

% flatpak run org.perezdecastro.Revolt
error: runtime/org.gnome.Platform/x86_64/3.22 not installed
%

If you need to install the runtime manually, you can do so by issuing the following command:

flatpak [--user] remote-add --from gnome https://sdk.gnome.org/gnome.flatpakrepo

If your Flatpak version is older than 0.6.13, use the following commands instead:

wget https://sdk.gnome.org/keys/gnome-sdk.gpg
flatpak [--user] remote-add --gpg-import=gnome-sdk.gpg gnome https://sdk.gnome.org/repo/
flatpak [--user] install gnome org.gnome.Platform 3.22

Manual Installation

Install the files to their locations:

sudo ./install.sh --prefix=/usr --log-file=install.log

(Specifying a log file is optional, but if you plan on upgrading later on using the install.sh script, it is recommended to use it.)

Install the dependencies:

sudo apt-get install python-gobject python3-gi libwebkit2gtk-4.0

Now you should be able to launch Revolt from the GNOME Shell.

Upgrading

The install.sh script can be used to upgrade an existing installation as well. The recommended way is to save a log of installed files, so the upgrade process can remove stray files from the old version. In general, the preferred way of invoking the installation script is as follows:

sudo ./install.sh --upgrade --prefix=/usr --log-file=/etc/revolt.files

This way a log of the installed files is recorded the first time that the installation is done, and further upgrades will use it to remove stray files from old versions. Also, the log file will be updated with every upgrade.

Development

Using make run executes Revolt in “development” mode: the needed resources are loaded from the source directory, instead of using the system-wide directories.

Flatpak

A bundle can be created using the included make-flatpak.sh script. The script arranges calling flatpak-builder to build and create a repository into .flatpak-repo. You can create a bundle from the repository using:

flatpak build-bundle .flatpak-repo/ Revolt.flatpak org.perezdecastro.Revolt

Once the bundle is created, you can install and run it with:

flatpak install --user --bundle Revolt.flatpak
flatpak run org.perezdecastro.Revolt