How to create an AppImage?

Where i can find the information about how Krita and Subsurface Appare Built ?
and why build on Travis CI, this software is for what ???

Check https://travis-ci.org/

Hi, can you tell me the necessary steps (in detail please) to convert an app into the appimage format?

I use KDE Neon (based on Ubuntu 16.04), which only works with 64bit and there is no way to install 32bit old software like Adobe Reader for Linux.

The application I would like to convert (to use if needed) is Adobe Acrobat for Linux.

Get the Deb from here:

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/9.x/9.5.5/enu/AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb

Dependencies for Adobe Reader

gtk2-engines-murrine:i386
libcanberra-gtk-module:i386
libatk-adaptor:i386
libgail-common:i386

Thanks so much.

Please ask Adobe to provide Adobe Acrobat for Linux as an AppImage.

The debs you posted are 32-bit - are there 64-bit ones, too?
Practically every Linux distribution comes with a PDF reader out of the box, so there may not be much interest in Adobe Reader for Linux.

Thanks for the answer.
Iā€™m sorry, I understand that my request is a bit annoying. And I understand also that Adobe would have no interest in answering me if I asked them to provide old Acrobat Reader for linux as AppImage. Moreover, in all these years they have not shown interest in updating their Linux version.

But I know there are numerous PDF readers under Linux, my favorite is Okular but I have a problem with documents that have legal value and that I can not read and print with any software under Linux (I tried them all)l. I also tried Master PDF Editor (which is very efficient) and Foxit Reader (which is also available under Linux) but none of them works with XFA modules. Only Acrobat can read them and print.

Unfortunately I have this problem. Under Wine Acrobat works very badly, freeze continuously. I downloaded and tried practically all the versions and combinations, even with the PlayOnLinux scripts. Does not work.

Unfortunately, Adobe has abandoned Acrobat Reader for Linux and has never created a 64bit version.

This is the reason for my request.

Sorry.

Hi there again, right now i am using ā€œDevuan Jessieā€. in some part of site or forum.

you have a tutorial for make packages without debs ???
just binary files.

Yes: https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/wiki/Creating-AppImages

We generally recommend that the author of an application should do this. So please ask the author of the application you are interested in to provide an AppImage.

Iā€™m trying to create an AppImage from a Python3 application using a YAML file. But I find it extremely hard to understand how to turn this into an AppImage. The documentation is somehow missing what Iā€™m looking for:

  • I create an AppImage from source, but I would like to avoid creating an AppDir manually.
  • We have a Python package on PyPI, and we can install the development version from GitHub using pip
  • The Automated continuous builds on Travis CI sounds a bit like, ā€œif you use Travis but donā€™t know what youā€™re doingā€ ā€“ what kind of magic does this do? I want to have control!
  • I found an example YAML (orschiro/dslli), which was supported/co-created by you, @probono, obviously. But no Travis configuration or documentation on which command(s) to use to turn that into an AppImage in their project README either.
  • Finally, I found the Wiki, which points to the pkg2appimage script, and Iā€™m tempted to download it and give it a try. But Iā€™m not really sure what it does (seems to be a lot of sed magic, wget, and stuff).

Is that really it? Why does it all seem so complicated? (ā€¦ when you donā€™t do Electron, obviously)

P.S.: Please understand this as some feedback from someone jumping into the AppImage topic; and please notice that Iā€™m not really a programming and packaging novice.

Hereā€™s my YAML:

app: PythonTurtle

ingredients:
  # there is no python3-wxgtk4.0 on Trusty -> we must use Bionic
  dist: bionic
  sources:
    - deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic main universe
  packages:
    - python3-minimal
    - python3-pip
    - python3-wxgtk4.0
  script:
    - python3 -m pip install --no-binary=PythonTurtle git+https://github.com/cool-RR/PythonTurtle

script:
  - cat > /usr/share/applications/PythonTurtle.desktop <<EOF
  - [Desktop Entry]
  - Version=1.0
  - Type=Application
  - Terminal=false
  - Name=Python Turtle
  - Exec=PythonTurtle %u
  - Icon=/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/PythonTurtle/resources/turtle.png
  - Comment=Learning environment for Python
  - Categories=Education;
  - EOF

Thanks for your feedback @bittner. AppImage itself isnā€™t hard at all (itā€™s just a self-mounting filesystem, after all) but producing what goes into it is.

There are many different ways to generate what goes into AppImages, and the best way to do it depends on what it is that you are packaging, and whether you want to build from scratch or start using existing packages.

If you want to convert existing deb packages to AppImage, then the pkg2appimage script is a useful tool. It uses .yml recipes that tell it what to do. This is documented in https://github.com/AppImage/AppImages/blob/master/YML.md.

If something about that document is not clear, please ask here or open an issue, thanks.

You might also be interested in https://github.com/linuxdeploy/linuxdeploy-plugin-conda which is another good way to generate AppImages for Python applications.

1 Like

Then the resulting binaries will only run on Bionic and newer Linux distributions, which is bad. It means that not all Linux users who are running still-supported distributions will be able to use such an AppImage.

Also all of the AppImage tools are currently targeting Ubuntu trusty, because this is the oldest currently still-supported LTS release of Ubuntu. Which means that you may run into many issues because no one has tested the AppImage related tools on anything newer than trusty (and we are currently not interested in doing that for the reasons cited above).

There are two solutions:

  • Downgrade the requirements for your projects to only need what trusty provides
  • Compile python3-wxgtk4.0 for trusty (or get it from a ppa if available)

Remove the leading /. You donā€™t want to install this in the root directory of your host system, but in the root directory of the AppDir.

Make that Icon=turtle and be sure to have turtle.png in the proper location usr/share/icons/hicolor/<resolution>/apps/turtle.png.

I have a Python file which I want to convert to AppImage.
Can you tell me the required steps including adding an icon to the resulting file?

The version up on appimagetool doesnā€™t work on my system, it says source is missing.

How do you invoke it? Did you point it to the AppDir that contains your application? (This is ā€œthe sourceā€ AppDir it is missing.)

Is it possible to get the steps to create an app image for the latest blender?

The download is here: https://www.blender.org/download/

My distro doesnā€™t have the latest and Iā€™d like to create an app image.

I am trying to build the recommended ā€œAppImageKitā€ under Ubuntu 16.04, but it seems this version is not supported yet.
Is there any plan to let us to use it with newer Ubuntu version?

Hi @blenderartist18, please ask the Blender developers to provide an AppImage. AppImageKit is made mainly for application developers who want to distribute their applications as AppImages, not for end users.

Hi @jungx, AppImageKit runs on Ubutnu 16.04 and newer versions just fine. We compile on CentOS 6, and it should run on that distribution and on newer distributions.

To make an AppImage of Blender, however, there are better ways than just using AppImageKit. If a Blender developer joins here, I can explain the details.

Some way to be able to create a Calibre-ebook appimage (calibre-ebook.com) that is updatable

The Calibre author has stated before that he has no interest in providing and supporting an official AppImage, hence I will not spend time on this, sorry.

If the Calibre author changes his mind, I am happy to support him do it.