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AppImage: Linux apps that run anywhere

appimage.org

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Re: AppImage: Linux apps that run anywhere

#211

Post by chei0aiV »

anonbanker wrote: post #206
nickpsecurity wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotcha. But thanks to /g/? Didn't know that existed so how would I have found it on my own? And "lots of learning" despite you having way less headaches? I'm a little confused as some of your answers inspire more questions.

/g/, the technology troll board of 4chan, has a meme of "install gentoo" whenever someone says "which is the best distribution to install for a new user?" Those users usually come back about a week later hating everyone for putting them with such a difficult OS. Calculate Linux has effectively removed most of this barrier, though, making Gentoo really easy to maintain for newbies. The Gentoo Handbook is an amazing to…

Why hasn't Gentoo made the same changes Calculate Linux has?

Re: AppImage: Linux apps that run anywhere

#212

Post by ris »

I wish we could kill this idea that the Windows/Macintosh model of running around the web finding random binaries to install is a good one. Every time I have to use a Mac or Windows machine and do this I find it a major chore, and also get pretty firmly freaked out by the number of spoof application homepages with trojaned installer "bundlings" you see flying around the web. could be an easy mistake to make for a less savvy user.

As for "it just works", I do wonder how long the rest of you have spent trying to get Postgres and psycopg2 reliably working together on a Mac. (Yeah, Postgres.app "just works"...)

It's a one-command, ten-second install on my Debian machine.

Re: AppImage: Linux apps that run anywhere

#213

Post by probonopd »

ris wrote: post #212

I wish we could kill this idea that the Windows/Macintosh model of running around the web finding random binaries to install is a good one. Every time I have to use a Mac or Windows machine and do this I find it a major chore, and also get pretty firmly freaked out by the number of spoof application homepages with trojaned installer "bundlings" you see flying around the web. could be an easy mistake to make for a les…

You shouldn't run "random binaries", but binaries from the original author of the software. E.g., Scribus from https://www.scribus.net/ or Subsurface from https://subsurface-divelog.org/. If you don't trust the original application author, then you should better not run the software at all.

Re: AppImage: Linux apps that run anywhere

#214

Post by the_why_of_y »

So this attempts to solve the problem of shipping and running desktop applications in a distribution agnostic way.

It cannot actually do this however, because in order for an application to actually run you need to ensure that it's dependencies (in particular shared libraries) are installed on the OS in a version that's compatible with the application, and the documentation is essentially hand-waving the problem away:

  Gather suitable binaries of all dependencies that
  are not part of the base operating systems you
  are targeting. For example, if you are targeting
  Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE, then you need to
  gather all libraries and other dependencies that
  your app requires to run that are not part of
  Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE.
So what does an application author do if the application requires OpenSSL, which exists in multiple ABI incompatible versions in different versions of distros?

xdg-app actually solves that problem with its Runtimes - you create an xdg-app application by building it against a SDK that corresponds to a particular Runtime, which won't be updated in ABI breaking ways. Application authors know exactly which libraries they can rely on and which they have to bundle.

Re: AppImage: Linux apps that run anywhere

#216

Post by ldamerow »

otabdeveloper wrote: post #41

Seems unnecessarily complicated. A script like this gets you 95% of the way there: mkdir AppDir mkdir AppDir/bin mkdir AppDir/data cp $INSTALLDIR/app AppDir/bin cp -r $INSTALLDIR/data AppDir cp `ldd AppDir/bin/app | grep -o '\W/[^ ]*'` AppDir/bin cat AppDir/app #!/bin/bash SCRIPT_PATH=$(dirname $(readlink -f $0)) $SCRIPT_PATH/bin/ld-*.so.2 --library-path $SCRIPT_PATH/bin $SCRIPT_PATH/bin/app $* EOF (Sometimes I wonde…

What happens if the app forks a child process? Chrome, for example, starts nacl_helper and chrome-sandbox. Is there a straightforward way to get those children to inherit the dynamic loader and library path?

Re: AppImage: Linux apps that run anywhere

#217

Post by probonopd »

sigmonsays wrote: post #215

This uses the fuse file system to intercept and rewrite paths. Anyone know the performance hit of doing this?

Depending on the scenario, an app packaged as an AppImage may launch as fast as or sometimes even faster (due to the compression) than an installed app. In most cases, there will not be a noticeable difference for normal desktop applications. Since an AppImage is also a valid ISO, you can loop-mount it and copy its contents wherever you like, and do a comparison.

Re: AppImage: Linux apps that run anywhere

#218

Post by JupiterMoon »

probonopd wrote: post #213
ris wrote: post #212

I wish we could kill this idea that the Windows/Macintosh model of running around the web finding random binaries to install is a good one. Every time I have to use a Mac or Windows machine and do this I find it a major chore, and also get pretty firmly freaked out by the number of spoof application homepages with trojaned installer "bundlings" you see flying around the web. could be an easy mistake to make for a les…

You shouldn't run "random binaries", but binaries from the original author of the software. E.g., Scribus from https://www.scribus.net/ or Subsurface from https://subsurface-divelog.org/ . If you don't trust the original application author, then you should better not run the software at all.

For the average user this relies on the original author having the resources to be the top hit on google.

Re: AppImage: Linux apps that run anywhere

#219

Post by lisivka »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #116
striking wrote: post #9

Why not just use a package manager? If the one in your distro sucks, find a better distro. (Arch Linux would be a good example.) The rule of thumb with OSes and implementing features is to avoid reinventing the wheel. Ports-like tools work very, very well on Linux. Binary distribution works fine too. Also, the shared libraries of each application don't have to be (and usually shouldn't be!) bundled with the applicati…

Did you read the intro paragraph on the website? "As an application author, I want to provide packages for Linux desktop systems, without the need to get it 'into' a distribution and without having to build for gazillions of different distributions." So you are a developer. You don't want to build gazillions of packages, but you want to target lots of users. Suppose you build a package for one distribution. Good luck…

I am sorry, but if YOU, the author, will ship MY GPLed library with YOUR application, then YOU are FORCED to open YOUR code under MY terms. Understand?

Don't steal my code, please. Don't bundle it with your proprietary app without my written permission.

Re: AppImage: Linux apps that run anywhere

#220

Post by lisivka »

otabdeveloper wrote: post #41

Seems unnecessarily complicated. A script like this gets you 95% of the way there: mkdir AppDir mkdir AppDir/bin mkdir AppDir/data cp $INSTALLDIR/app AppDir/bin cp -r $INSTALLDIR/data AppDir cp `ldd AppDir/bin/app | grep -o '\W/[^ ]*'` AppDir/bin cat AppDir/app #!/bin/bash SCRIPT_PATH=$(dirname $(readlink -f $0)) $SCRIPT_PATH/bin/ld-*.so.2 --library-path $SCRIPT_PATH/bin $SCRIPT_PATH/bin/app $* EOF (Sometimes I wonde…

Don't steal my code, please. Don't bundle my open library with your proprietary app without my written permission.
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