Reference examples of AppImage packages in AUR

apetresc · 2018-01-12 19:24:54

Are there any high-quality PKGBUILDs on AUR that can considered the "correct" way to package AppImages, or is AppImage considered too philosophically incompatible with AUR?

In particular, if I'm packaging a binary AppImage, would it be more correct to just drop the .AppImage in /opt, or to use --appimage-extract to unpack the squashfs and manually place all the extracted components in the right place on the normal root filesystem and sidestep the AppRun script altogether? (In which case, appimage-git become a makedepend rather than a depend for the package)

Overall, the complete and utter lack of any mention of AppImage on the wiki gives me a feeling that the technology as a whole is considered non grata. Is this true, and I just shouldn't bother even trying to touch anything distributed through AppImages?

progandy · 2018-01-12 20:04:10

I guess you can use upwork-appimage as a reference. (Edit: There are a few small issues, 7z is used instead of bsdtar, the patch is missing from the source array, and the conflicts with native installations are unnecessary if you choose better names for icons and desktop files)

If you prefer to extract an image, then maybe it is better to use unsquashfs from squashfs-tools instead of appimage-extract. Maybe even bsdtar might work, so you can cut down the dependencies even more since bsdtar is required by makepkg itself.

I personally dislike AppImage just like any binary distribution software release. It makes it difficult to keep all libraries and dependencies up to date.

Last edited by progandy (2018-01-16 13:02:54)

phw · 2018-01-16 12:55:48

progandy wrote:

I personally dislike AppImage just like any binary distribution. It makes it difficult to keep all libraries and dependencies up to date.

Actually pacman -Syu does work quite well to update binary packages

EDIT: I know that's not what you meant, but couldn't resist

Last edited by phw (2018-01-16 12:56:36)

Trilby · 2018-01-16 13:09:16

I just learned about AppImages in another thread - so I don't have any background - but I did confirm that if you just put the url in the source array, makepkg will unpack the AppImage just fine on it's own (with bsdtar). It results in a `usr` directory tree and an AppRun script in the `src` directory.

phw · 2018-01-16 13:33:05

To add something more productive: I am not sure packaging an AppImage makes much sense. After all the AppImage itself is meant to be run by the user as is. One could just package the AppImage in /usr/bin (or /opt as you suggested and add a symlink to /usr/bin), but that does not feel right. Extracting the binaries from the AppImage could be an option, so you can place everything where it belongs. But depending on the case that might proof diffcult, especiall when the AppImage packages additional dependencies.

So if the software is also available in some other format (ideally source, maybe a binary archive) I would try to package this. If it is not possible I would probably treat it like any other software that is available only in binary form and does not follow any file layout standard: put it in /opt.

I said pretty much the same on https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 8#p1761598

Arch Linux

#1 2018-01-12 19:24:54

Reference examples of AppImage packages in AUR

#2 2018-01-12 20:04:10

Re: Reference examples of AppImage packages in AUR

#3 2018-01-16 12:55:48

Re: Reference examples of AppImage packages in AUR

#4 2018-01-16 13:09:16

Re: Reference examples of AppImage packages in AUR

#5 2018-01-16 13:33:05

Re: Reference examples of AppImage packages in AUR

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