Making AppImages work on any linux system

[Samueru-sama]

I guess this is a follow up of #369

Lately I've been updating all my appimages to work on any linux system by deploying all the libs including the dynamic linker without using containers or similar tricks, which lets them work on any linux system, be it very old or a musl system.

I originally used go-appimage's deploy everything mode, but I just moved to either doing it manually or using sharun.

The following appimages should work on any distro:

https://github.com/Samueru-sama/GIMP-AppImage
https://github.com/Samueru-sama/mpv-AppImage
https://github.com/Samueru-sama/OBS-Studio-AppImage
https://github.com/Samueru-sama/DeaDBeeF-AppImage
https://github.com/Samueru-sama/puddletag-AppImage
https://github.com/Samueru-sama/strawberry-AppImage
https://github.com/Samueru-sama/pavucontrol-qt-AppImage
https://github.com/Samueru-sama/SpeedCrunch-AppImage
https://github.com/Samueru-sama/android-tools-AppImage
https://github.com/Samueru-sama/polybar-AppImage
https://github.com/Samueru-sama/rofi-AppImage

I have also made PRs on other repos to have such appimages:

AlexanderP/tesseract-appimage#4
Syllo/nvtop#324 (Next release with the changes hasn't been made)
dunst-project/dunst#1391 (Still open)

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CC @Drsheppard01

[Drsheppard01]

Hi guys. I can test it in my system (Chimera Linux, musl, chimerautils)

• GIMP (work pretty)
• mpv
• OBS
• DeaDBeeF
• Puddletag
• Strawberry
• pavucontrol-qt
• Speed-Crunch
• android-tools
• polybar (included config not uploaded)
• rofi (can't exit from rofi, looks like touchpad or keyboard isn't initialized)

btw, need help to improve gyroflow build scripts https://github.com/gyroflow/gyroflow

[Samueru-sama]

polybar (included config not uploaded)

Looks like polybar expects a default config file on /etc when the user doesn't have one. Should be an easy fix with some hook checking if there isnt a user config file copies the one in the AppDir to that location.

rofi (can't exit from rofi, looks like touchpad or keyboard isn't initialized)

I tested the appimage on a void musl vm and I can't replicate this issue. 🤔

btw, need help to improve gyroflow build scripts https://github.com/gyroflow/gyroflow

This? https://github.com/gyroflow/gyroflow/blob/373dd2bcaf4c5a16ec5e450d40a4f7adf732cb4a/_deployment/linux/AppImageBuilder.yml

All of that has to go xd, the old appimagebuilder scripts even use an AppRun that has a dependency to glibc.

sharun actually has the .envcapability of that AppRun as well, plus it already sets several env variables for certain locations that need them already.

sharun also hardlinks itself to the binaries being ran, which means this issue with go-appimage is avoided.

[Samueru-sama]

btw, need help to improve gyroflow build scripts https://github.com/gyroflow/gyroflow

In any case I'm on the loomix telegram channel if you need help, you can find the link on the readme of this repo

[Samueru-sama]

polybar (included config not uploaded)

Alright this should work now, I did the old school trick of patching the binary instead of having a check and copying the config in the AppRun.

[Samueru-sama]

Update: I updated the GIMP and OBS appimages to use this appimage runtime that works with dwarfs, so now they are a bit smaller as result.

[jcelerier]

I'm curious, how does that work for opengl / libGL.so ? As you cannot ship multiple libGL.so but that's what is needed for nvidia vs non-nvidia

[Samueru-sama]

I'm curious, how does that work for opengl / libGL.so ? As you cannot ship multiple libGL.so but that's what is needed for nvidia vs non-nvidia

Good question, not sure.

Do you have nvidia? I recently had this issue: pkgforge-dev/PPSSPP-AppImage#7

But it ended up being the user having a too old GPU since the problem is present with other methods like flatpak.

I already bundle nvk libs on my appimages, but as far as I know that's vulkan and not opengl. I think the proprietary nvidia driver would be dlopened on host, which means I wouldn't work on appimages that ship musl, but I don't think I have an appmage that uses the video drivers that ships musl though.

[jcelerier]

nvidia driver doesn't work on musl systems at all anyways, it explicitly requires glibc

[Samueru-sama]

nvidia driver doesn't work on musl systems at all anyways, it explicitly requires glibc

Yeah that's what I said at the end

"I think the proprietary nvidia driver would be dlopened on host, which means I wouldn't work on appimages that ship musl, but I don't think I have an appmage that uses the video drivers that ships musl though."