appimage-builder 0.3.1

Recipe based AppImage creation meta-tool

appimage-builder

appimage-builder allows packing applications along with all of its dependencies. It uses traditional GNU/Linux software package tools like apt or yum to obtain binaries and resolve dependencies creating a self-sufficient bundle. The embedded binaries are configured to be relocatable and to interact with the rest. Finally, the whole bundle is compressed as a squashfs filesystem and attached to a launcher binary using appimagetool making a nice AppImage.

Features:

• recipe based
• self-sufficient bundles
• backward and forwards compatibility
• cross bundling (don't confuse it with cross-compilation, that's out of the tool scope)
• basic license compliance (package license files will be bundled)
• apt package manager support
• yum package manager support (experimental)

Dependencies & Installation

The project is built using Python 3 and uses various command-line applications to fulfill its goal. Depending on the host system and the recipe the packages providing such applications may vary.

Install on Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt install -y python3-pip python3-setuptools patchelf desktop-file-utils
# Install appimagetool AppImage
sudo wget https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/releases/download/continuous/appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage -O /usr/local/bin/appimagetool
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/appimagetool

sudo pip3 install appimage-builder

Usage

The packaging process will be defined in a yaml formatted file name AppImageBuilder.yml. This file is made up three main sections: script, AppDir and AppImage. Each corresponds to a different step of the AppImage creation process.

Bellow, you will find a description of each section of the AppImageBuilder file. Additionally are provide a set of examples in the project repository. Please refer to them if you are looking for a template.

script

The script section consists of a list of shell instructions. It should be used to deploy your application binaries and resources or other resources that cannot be resolved using the package manager.

Example of how to deploy a regular cmake application binaries.

script:
  - cmake .
  - make DESTDIR=Appdir install

In the cases where you don't use a build tool or it doesn't have an install feature, you can run any type of command in this section. In the example below a qml file is deployed to be used as part of a pure qml application.

script:
  - mkdir -p AppDir
  - cp -f main.qml AppDir/

AppDir

The AppDir section is the heart of the recipe. It will contain information about the software being packed, its dependencies, the runtime configuration, and the tests. See the example below corresponding to a pure QML application.

AppDir sections:

path

Path to the AppDir.

AppDir:
  path: ./AppDir

app_info

• id: application id. Is a mandatory field and must match the application desktop entry name without the '.desktop' extensions. It's recommended to used reverse domain notation like org.goodcoders.app.
• name: Application name, feel free here :)
• icon: Application icon. It will be used as the bundle icon. The icon will be copied from $APPDIR/usr/share/icons or from your system folder /usr/share/icons
• version: application version
• exec: path to the application binary. In the case of interpreted programming languages such as Java, Python or QML it should point to the interpreter binary.
• exec_args: arguments to be passed when starting the application. You can make use of environment variables such as "$APPDIR" to refer to the bundle root and $@ to bypass the user arguments to binary.

  app_info:
    id: org.apppimagecrafters.hello_qml
    name: Hello QML
    icon: text-x-qml
    version: 1.0
    exec: usr/lib/qt5/bin/qmlscene
    exec_args: $@ ${APPDIR}/main.qml

apt

The apt is used to list the packages of the app dependencies and the sources to fetch them.

• arch: binaries arch. Must match the one used in the sources configuration.

• sources: apt sources to be used to retrieve the packages

  • sourceline: apt config source line. It's recommended to include the arch on it to speed up builds.
  • key_url: apt key to validate the packages in the repository. An url to the actual key is expected.

• include: list of packages to be included in the bundle. Package dependencies will also be bundled

• exclude: list of packages to not be bundle. Use it to excluded those packages that aren't required.

  apt:
   arch: i386
   sources:
     - sourceline: 'deb [arch=i386] http://mx.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic main restricted universe multiverse'
       key_url: 'http://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x3b4fe6acc0b21f32'

   include:
     - qmlscene
     - qml-module-qtquick2
   exclude:
     - qtchooser

The tool generates a cache where the downloaded packages and other auxiliary files are stored, it will be located in the current work dir with the name appimage-builder-cache. It's safe to erase it and should not be included in your VCS tree.

files

The files is used to manipulate (include/exclude) files directly. Globing expressions can be used to refer to a given set of files.

• include: list of absolute paths to files. The file will be copied under the same inside the AppDir. i.e.: /usr/bin/xrandr will end at $APPDIR/usr/bin/randr
• exclude: list of relative globing shell expressions to the files that will not be included in the final AppDir. Expressions will be evaluated relative to the AppDir. Use it to excluded un-required files such as man pages or development resources.

  files:
    exclude:
      - usr/share/man
      - usr/share/doc/*/README.*
      - usr/share/doc/*/changelog.*
      - usr/share/doc/*/NEWS.*
      - usr/share/doc/*/TODO.*

test

The test section is used to describe test cases for your final bundle. The AppDir as it's can be already executed. Therefore it can be placed inside a docker container and executed. This section facilitates the process. Notice that you will test that your app is properly bundled and isolated therefore is recommended to use minimal Docker images (i.e.: with no desktop environment installed).

IMPORTANT: docker is required to be installed running to execute the tests

Each test case has a name, which could be any alphanumeric string and the following parameters:

• image: docker image to be used
• command: command to execute
• use_host_x: whether to share or not the host X11 session with the container. This feature may not be supported by some containers as it depends on X11.
• env: list of environment variables to be passed to the docker container

 test:
   fedora:
     image: fedora:26
     command: "./AppRun main.qml"
     use_host_x: True
   ubuntu:
     image: ubuntu:xenial
     command: "./AppRun main.qml"
     use_host_x: True

runtime

Advanced runtime configuration.

• env: map of the environment variables to be set at runtime.

 runtime:
   env:
     PATH: '${APPDIR}/usr/bin:${PATH}'

AppImage

The AppImage section refers to the final bundle creation. It's basically a wrapper over appimagetool

• arch: AppImage runtime arch. Usually, it should match the embed binaries arch, but a different compatible one could be used. For example, an amd64 runtime can be used with i386 embed binaries.
• update-indo: AppImage update info. See Making AppImages updateable.
• sign-key: the key to sign the bundle. See Signing AppImage.
• name: use it to rename your final bundle. By default it will be named as follows: ${AppDir.app_info.name}-${AppDir.app_info.version}-${AppImage.arch}.AppImage. Variables are not supported yet and are used only for illustrative purposes.