appimage

README

Go AppImage

Experimental playgroud for a Go implementation of AppImage tools, from the inventor of the AppImage format.

• appimaged, an optional daemon that integrates AppImages into the system, shows their icons, and makes them executable
• appimagetool, a tool to convert AppDirs into AppImages

Download them from https://github.com/probonopd/appimage/releases/tag/continuous.

NOTE: You might be looking for https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit instead in case you are looking for current production code.

Why Go?

I am playing around with Go because

• Go follows the "keep it simple" principle - in line with what I like
• Go compiles code to static binaries by default - no messing around with shared libraries that tend to break on some target systems (e.g., for converting SVG to PNG), no need to build in Docker containers with ancient systems for compatibility
• Go does not need Makefiles, Autoconf, CMake, Meson - stuff that adds "meta work" which I don't like to spend my time on
• Go is designed with concurrency and networking in mind - stuff that will come in handy for building in p2p distribution and updating
• Go is something I want to learn - and one learns best using a concrete project

Ideas

• Build in p2p distribution using IPFS (which is written in Go)? https://github.com/hsanjuan/ipfs-lite/ or https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/tree/master/docs/examples/go-ipfs-as-a-library
• Build in zsync (Go should be a good choice for it)? https://github.com/agriardyan/go-zsyncmake/ + TBD

TODO

• Get rid of C code embedded in Go (e.g., for the calculation of the size of an ELF)
• Write tests

Conventions

• https://github.com/golang-standards/project-layout/tree/master/pkg