Re: Request for feedback: Chicken as a self-contained AppImage

[Daniel Ziltener]

Hi elf,

basically the AppImage contains a squashfs partition which gets mounted 
like any other device when you run it. Egg installations/updates get put 
in the same location as they would with a normally installed Chicken, 
so, /usr/lib64/chicken/11 or similar. Compiler and interpreter do both 
work, at least for very basic things I did a quick test with. The 
compiler will use your system's C/C++ compiler.

Linking is something I have not gotten to yet; the main library is 
inside the AppImage, so statically linked binaries should work properly, 
but for dynamic linking I suppose I'll have to provide a command to 
extract the library to the libdir.

Finding external dependencies also works just the same as with a 
normally installed Chicken. Nothing gets sandboxed.

On 28.09.22 21:52, elf@ephemeral.net wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I love the idea, but a few questions:
>
> 1) How does this handle egg installation/updates?
> 2) Do both the compiler and interpreter work?
> 3) How do binaries built with csc work, in terms of linking and including?
> 4) How do eggs handle finding external dependencies?
>
> All of these should make it (painfully) obvious that I don't know anything 
> about AppImage, so if you can explain in more detail or send links to clarify, 
> it would be most appreciated.
>
> Thanks!
>
> -elf
>
> From: Daniel Ziltener <dziltener@lyrion.ch>
> To: chicken-users@nongnu.org
> Date: 28 Sep 2022 22:37:59
> Subject: Request for feedback: Chicken as a self-contained AppImage
>
> > Hello Chickeners!
> >
> > I had a "why not?" idea recently. I'm maintaining the RPM packages for Chicken, and I 
> > thought "why not pack Chicken into an AppImage?" - and that's what I did!
> >
> > For those who don't know AppImages: they are single-file volumes (think ISO or 
> > DMG) but executable, and they work, without any further requirements apart from 
> > FUSE (to mount the embedded SquashFS), on every Linux distribution. You 
> > download an AppImage, rename it if you want, make it executable, and it's ready 
> > for use. (if you have AppImageUpdate installed, you can even automatically 
> > check for and get updates).
> >
> > So in this case, I packed a little script into the AppImage, since Chicken has 
> > a whole bunch of executables. The AppImage is being built on OpenSUSE's OBS 
> > service, and a download page is on https://www.appimagehub.com/p/1911578/ , 
> > where you'll also find further description on how to use it.
> >
> > Try it out if you like, and let me know about your thoughts, bugs to fix, or 
> > improvements to make. A bit later I will link it on the installation page of 
> > the Chicken wiki.
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Daniel