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So every time there is glibc / openssl / anything else security update, We will have to update all appimage programs as well ?
Edit: Come to think of it, considering how many applications out there haven't had any updates in years... that might not be such a good idea.
I too love package management like the rest of the people on this thread but the existence of this project confirms that we have a problem, distribution is pretty hard.
So every time there is glibc / openssl / anything else security update, We will have to update all appimage programs as well ?
Follow-up question: is there a built-in app update mechanism? If not, this isn't really a replacement for package systems.
https://github.com/probonopd/AppImageKit/tree/master/AppImag...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Application binaries must statically link libc and ssl when making programs for packging into appimage?
I haven't dug far enough into this specific project to know if it's static or dynamic linking, but that just doesn't matter. Each app has it's own copy of libssl etc embedded into the prepackaged "binary" which is executed.. That's enough to know it's going to lead to all sorts of suffering when you actually try and rid yourself of $CVE of the month.
There's really no excuse for this.
I am profoundly uninterested in a third-party package manager that does not provide any sandboxing features. xdg-app has them, but AppImage does not mention sandboxing on its web site or in its README.
As a user, I want to download an application from the original author, and run it on my Linux desktop system just like I would do with a Windows or Mac application. Please pull over. I want off this ride. Why the hell are we regressing to shipping around hackily built binaries?
Because users and developers both want to be able to download and use new versions of software at a release cadence that makes sense for that application. The "every application gets the same release cadence no matter what" approach only appeals to people making distros.
What we have now are mostly system package managers, you want them to be stable, secure, having the latest features might not be necessary.
But we see more and more often that that distribution channel doesn't work well with applications: you end up with old, buggy, insecure applications because the distribution just couldn't keep up with the upstream update cycle. Why not have a cross-distribution application manager which distributes AppImages? That way, application distribution is an effort concentrated over all the distributions, possibly benefiting the entire community.