[HELP WANTED] AppImage packaging

[psygreg]

We are looking for someone in the community, with the knowledge and time needed, willing to create a functioning AppImage builder for the app. It should be done as follows:

• using linuxdeploy or similar tool to sort out dependencies
• work without installing or unpacking it in any way, just opening the AppImage
• the build process must be done in a build script
• that script must successfully build in Ubuntu 24.04
• it should work in as many distros as possible, that are on par or more recent on packages than Ubuntu 24.04, exceptions made for distros where AppImages are knowingly unreliable

[ivan-hc]

Hi, I wrote this script for you to download the latest tar.xz archive and convert it to an AppImage (no libfuse2 dependency, you don't need it anymore)

linuxtoys.sh.txt

this is the content

#!/bin/sh

APP=linuxtoys

ARCH="x86_64"

# DEPENDENCIES

dependencies="tar"
for d in $dependencies; do
	if ! command -v "$d" 1>/dev/null; then
		echo "ERROR: missing command \"d\", install the above and retry" && exit 1
	fi
done

_appimagetool() {
	if ! command -v appimagetool 1>/dev/null; then
		[ ! -f ./appimagetool ] && curl -#Lo appimagetool https://github.com/AppImage/appimagetool/releases/download/continuous/appimagetool-"$ARCH".AppImage && chmod a+x ./appimagetool
		./appimagetool "$@"
	else
		appimagetool "$@"
	fi
}

DOWNLOAD_PAGE=$(curl -Ls https://api.github.com/repos/psygreg/linuxtoys/releases)
DOWNLOAD_URL=$(echo "$DOWNLOAD_PAGE" | tr '><" ' '\n' |  grep -i "^https.*github.com.*download.*tar.xz$" | head -1)
VERSION=$(echo "$DOWNLOAD_URL" | tr '/' '\n' | grep "^v[0-9]\|^[0-9]" | head -1)
[ ! -f "$APP".tar.xz  ] && curl -#Lo "$APP".tar.xz  "$DOWNLOAD_URL"
mkdir -p "$APP".AppDir || exit 1

# Extract the package
tar fx ./*tar* && mv ./"$APP"*/* "$APP".AppDir/ || exit 1

_appimage_basics() {
	# AppRun
	rm -f ./"$APP".AppDir/AppRun
	cat <<-'HEREDOC' >> ./"$APP".AppDir/AppRun
	#!/bin/sh
	HERE="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "${0}")")"
	if test -d "${HERE}"/usr/lib/python*; then
	  PYTHONVERSION=$(find /usr/lib -type d -name "python*" | head -1 | sed 's:.*/::')
	  export XDG_DATA_DIRS="${HERE}"/usr/share/:"${XDG_DATA_DIRS}"
	  export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/"$PYTHONVERSION"/site-packages/:/usr/lib/"$PYTHONVERSION"/lib-dynload/:"${PYTHONPATH}"
	  export PYTHONHOME="${HERE}"/usr/
	fi
	# Set process name for better desktop integration
	export LINUXTOYS_PROCESS_NAME="linuxtoys"
	cd "${HERE}"/usr/share/linuxtoys
	exec /usr/bin/python3 run.py "$@"
	HEREDOC
	chmod a+x ./"$APP".AppDir/AppRun

	# Desktop file
	cp -r ./"$APP".AppDir/usr/share/applications/*.desktop ./"$APP".AppDir/

	# Icon
	cp -r ./"$APP".AppDir/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/* ./"$APP".AppDir/
}

_appimage_basics

# CONVERT THE APPDIR TO AN APPIMAGE
ARCH=x86_64 VERSION="$VERSION" _appimagetool -s ./"$APP".AppDir 2>&1
if ! test -f ./*.AppImage; then
	echo "No AppImage available."; exit 1
fi

[ivan-hc]

Usage

simplescreenrecorder-2025-09-13_09.37.47.mp4

[ivan-hc]

As you can see, it is simple and small and uses the system's python.

To improve it and if you see something missing, just edit the AppRun. This is the one I provided in the script:

#!/bin/sh
HERE="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "${0}")")"
if test -d "${HERE}"/usr/lib/python*; then
  PYTHONVERSION=$(find /usr/lib -type d -name "python*" | head -1 | sed 's:.*/::')
  export XDG_DATA_DIRS="${HERE}"/usr/share/:"${XDG_DATA_DIRS}"
  export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/"$PYTHONVERSION"/site-packages/:/usr/lib/"$PYTHONVERSION"/lib-dynload/:"${PYTHONPATH}"
  export PYTHONHOME="${HERE}"/usr/
fi
# Set process name for better desktop integration
export LINUXTOYS_PROCESS_NAME="linuxtoys"
cd "${HERE}"/usr/share/linuxtoys
exec /usr/bin/python3 run.py "$@"

variables in the if statement are not set, since a python directory is not inside the AppImage. I'm not a Python expert at all.

You can change the AppRun like this then

#!/bin/sh
HERE="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "${0}")")"
# Set process name for better desktop integration
export LINUXTOYS_PROCESS_NAME="linuxtoys"
cd "${HERE}"/usr/share/linuxtoys
exec /usr/bin/python3 run.py "$@"

...and add special functions to check dependencies if needed, or set a password (in the video, I got an exit 1 error while trying to install Bottles, because no password was provided).

[ivan-hc]

@Samueru-sama Do you want to suggest something too?

[Samueru-sama]

• https://github.com/Samueru-sama/linuxtoys-appimage-test/blob/main/get-dependencies.sh

• https://github.com/Samueru-sama/linuxtoys-appimage-test/blob/main/linuxtoys-appimage.sh

• https://github.com/Samueru-sama/linuxtoys-appimage-test/actions/runs/17694915474

edit: big incident in the previous run gtk3 wasn't deployed lol

[Samueru-sama]

• https://github.com/Samueru-sama/linuxtoys-appimage-test/blob/main/get-dependencies.sh

  • https://github.com/Samueru-sama/linuxtoys-appimage-test/blob/main/linuxtoys-appimage.sh

  • https://github.com/Samueru-sama/linuxtoys-appimage-test/actions/runs/17694915474

edit: big incident in the previous run gtk3 wasn't deployed lol

Tested it working on ubuntu 14.04, light theme is a bit broken though:

[psygreg]

I'll test it in my Ubuntu building container, thank you for all the effort so far!

[psygreg]

For future testing, you can use the developer mode to sanity check things without actually making any changes to your system (dry run). Its instructions can be found under Advanced Features in the Developer Handbook.