Setup Travis-CI for autobuild AppImage (portable package for Linux)

[ghost]

Providing an AppImage would have, among others, these advantages:

• Applications packaged as an AppImage can run on many distributions (including Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, CentOS, elementaryOS, Linux Mint, and others)
• One app = one file = super simple for users: just download one AppImage file, make it executable, and run
• No unpacking or installation necessary
• No root needed
• No system libraries changed
• Works out of the box, no installation of runtimes needed
• Optional desktop integration with appimaged
• Optional binary delta updates, e.g., for continuous builds (only download the binary diff) using AppImageUpdate
• Can optionally GPG2-sign your AppImages (inside the file)
• Works on Live ISOs
• Can use the same AppImages when dual-booting multiple distributions
• Can be listed in the AppImageHub central directory of available AppImages

Here is an overview of some projects that are already distributing upstream-provided, official AppImages.

https://github.com/probonopd/linuxdeployqt has lots of real-world examples on how to do this. Let @probonopd know if something is not clear or you need some help.

https://github.com/probonopd/uploadtool script will help you setup Travis-CI for uploading built AppImage's automatically back to Github repo in "Releases" section.

If you have questions, AppImage developers are on #AppImage on irc.freenode.net

Ask @probonopd for help you on Github ;-)

[ghost]

For the record, unofficial AppImage's published here:

• https://modarchive.org/forums/index.php?topic=4025.0

But I ask for setup Travis-CI & Github for producing official AppImage's as @probonopd recommend already.

[probonopd]

Given this https://github.com/milkytracker/MilkyTracker/blob/master/.travis.yml it should be rather straightforward to produce AppImages from the Travis CI builds like in the examples on https://github.com/probonopd/linuxdeployqt.

[MIfeanyi]

lets do it

[probonopd]

Let me know if you are running into any issues or get stuck, I'm happy to help.

[ghost]

Any news?

[probonopd]

I am happy to help if someone from the project is working on this and is running into issues.

[Deltafire]

Perhaps someone could submit a pull request for this?

[MIfeanyi]

I'm familiar at least at a basic level with using AppImage with packaging Love2D & also just built a AppImage for Milky 0.90.85 . I'm going to try building from source but I'm not to familiar with travis... or good with CMake. For example I dont understand how the "script" portion of the example yaml for linuxdeployqt

[MIfeanyi]

actually please see this

[probonopd]

Seems to be mixed up because there are Linux commands in the os: osx section and there is -DCMAKE_OSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.7 in the os: linux section. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

What does script: &cmake_build mean?

For example I dont understand how the "script" portion of the example yaml for linuxdeployqt

Let me annotate it:

script:
# Configure the application in the release configuration with the prefix /usr (as for any Qt based application), has nothing to do with AppImage specifically
  - qmake CONFIG+=release PREFIX=/usr
# Compile the application, has nothing to do with AppImage specifically
  - make -j$(nproc)
# Install the application, but inside an appdir/ directory (rather than in / as you would normally do)
  - make INSTALL_ROOT=appdir -j$(nproc) install ; find
# Download the linuxdeployqt tool which will transform the contents of the appdir/ directory into an AppImage
  - wget -c -nv "https://github.com/probonopd/linuxdeployqt/releases/download/continuous/linuxdeployqt-continuous-x86_64.AppImage"
# Make it executable
  - chmod a+x linuxdeployqt-continuous-x86_64.AppImage
# Unset variables that were set earlier, so that linuxdeployqt can work correctly
  - unset QTDIR; unset QT_PLUGIN_PATH ; unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH
# Export the VERSION environment variable so that the linuxdeployqt tool knows the version of the application to be put into the AppImage
  - export VERSION=$(git rev-parse --short HEAD) # linuxdeployqt uses this for naming the file
# Run linuxdeployqt so that it copies dependencies into the appdir/ directory; tell it (by pointing to the desktop file) which application is the main application inside the appdir/; also tell it to not just bundle Qt but other libraries, too
  - ./linuxdeployqt-continuous-x86_64.AppImage appdir/usr/share/applications/*.desktop -bundle-non-qt-libs
# Run linuxdeployqt again and tell it to convert the appdir/ directory to an AppImage file
  - ./linuxdeployqt-continuous-x86_64.AppImage appdir/usr/share/applications/*.desktop -appimage

Does this make it clear? If not, which portions are unclear?

[MIfeanyi]

@probonopd Thank you for going into such detail for me. I am not a travis CI / CMake user so I'll have to do a bit more research & get a little familiar with MT specific stuff. Hopefully I can get it working over the weekend. Does anyone know if Travis CI works on forks? @Symbian9 are you familiar with it enough so we can work on this together?

[probonopd]

Yes, it works on forks just as normal.

[MIfeanyi]

I'm getting a lot closer. I still need to clean up the osx script that I messed up but here's the current yaml . This is the latest TCI but the last command fails: ./linuxdeployqt-continuous-x86_64.AppImage *.desktop -appimage Looking at the output it seems like linuxdeployqt is pulling the binary from Cpack instead of the binary I copied... should I need to copy the files into a new directory?

[MIfeanyi]

I have it decently working but what's the best way to integrate this? I dont think it should stay in the yaml as it's quite a bit for just one build esp if others wanted to add in snaps, flatpak, etc.

[probonopd]

I think it's good to have it in .travis.yml - does it produce a working AppImage?

[MIfeanyi]

@Deltafire What are your thoughts? Should I have AppImage generation in it's own script & just put minimal lines into the yaml? What would have to stay is linuxdeployqt ppa info, the script, & adding Appimage into releases.

[Deltafire]

I think it should be in .travis.yaml, perhaps with a comment to specify which build steps are specific to appimage.

[coderofsalvation]

ps. I've created a more or less working milkytracker AppImage (though using appveyor.yml since I didn't know about this thread).

[coderofsalvation]

AppImage is now created automatically since v1.04 🎉