I installed the Flatpak for Webstorm (a Jetbrains Javascript IDE), known as com.jetbrains.Webstorm from Flathub. The pack itself comes with no binaries or development sdks, solely the ones needed to get Webstorm running.
I installed org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.node16 for the Node.js SDK, but when I got on Webstorm, /usr/bin/node was still empty. My question is, how can I install Node.js into my Webstorm Flatpak? Do I have to build a completely new one?
I'm not familiar with WebStorm itself, but you should be able to mount Node.js into it by manually running flatpak install org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.node16 and then launching WebStorm with the FLATPAK_ENABLE_SDK_EXT=node16 environment variable set.
It doesn't appear to take if specified via Flatseal or flatpak override, so you'll need to use your desktop's launcher editor or a wrapper script. to set it before the flatpak run command.
My source is that this works for me:
flatpak install org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.rust-stable
FLATPAK_ENABLE_SDK_EXT=rust-stable flatpak run --devel --share=network --filesystem=home:rw --command=bash org.freedesktop.Sdk
According to this Endless OS forum post, what you're planning is unfortunately impossible:
That does not work that way
[The flatpak NodeJS] extension can be used by Flatpak Developers/Packagers to include the NodeJS Runtime environment in the Flatpak if the packaged application depends on it.
It seems like the com.jetbrains.WebStorm Flatpak does not include this extension. The suggested solution is to simply install NodeJS on the host using "traditional" means, such as the operating system's package manager, by downloading from the official NodeJS download page or using a NodeJS version manager such as nvm or Volta. WebStorm will pick it up.
