Hello Everyone I have made and open sourced a new tool that hopefully will help some of you have a Linux version of your software . This tool, once pointed at a compiled Xojo project directory will package and output a Linux AppImage!
A highly portable program kind of like a exe file on Windows but it runs the application vs installing it
it also contains all of the dependencies located inside the lib and resources folders so there is no moving around a bunch of items, your Linux software is now an all-in-one package!
It doesn’t require a repo or package manager, you can sell it as a download on a website or share it another way quite easily
You can get the project and code here:
Please give it a try and if you like it consider tossing me a donation or hey a copy of your software. I would be happy to test it out I also plan to make a Patreon website with AppImages of all my software if you don’t want to use source code and just want a nice AppImage. Thank you for taking a look and let me know if you find any issues!
I’ll have to make logic for applications without resource folders, all of mine I tested with had one generated by default.
Until then could you make one? It should work with that.
I’ll have to use the lib folder if no resource folder is present or something. Thank you for the insight though! I’ll work on it tonight.
Thank you for this. It inspired me to try again at getting my app working on Linux… only to find that Xojo still has some major problems on Linux. Maybe another try again in another year…
Drawing bugs. Xojo’s own remote debug app suffers the same problems. Drawing text inside a canvas is squished horizontally, and window controls (close, minimize, maximize) are squished vertically.
The close/min/max buttons should be handled via GTK3 settings or themes, Xojo to my knowledge doesn’t draw that. It’s also why you can’t switch from dark to light mode at will with the ide toggle.
As for the canvas text, have you tried something like the Ubuntu font or monospace, might fix the issue with made for Linux stuff?
Either way, I’m always going to be pro Linux editions the community isn’t as aesthetically focused as other tech spaces!
Considering it’s any and all Xojo apps (well, that’s I’ve tested) and only Xojo apps doing it, it’s Xojo’s problem. As for the font, it’s set to System. Labels and controls draw correctly, but Graphics.DrawText gets it wrong.
Sorry to derail your thread though. I just wanted to say I really appreciate your work on this. I had asked a while ago about distribution on Linux, and got met with crickets. So it’s nice to see somebody putting some effort in, even if I’m not able to take advantage of it. Or I guess willing would be the right word, since I could release with these oddities, but I’m not willing to.
I have tested it on 5 different applications of mine with no issues, even deleted my resource folders for those apps. Does your application have any dependencies needed in a specific place? What does your app do?
Unfortunately I can’t debug everyone’s app, do you have your application up anywhere and I can try packaging it to see if it is a problem with my tool?
If you are referencing the AppImage icon, I would recommend not having extremely large pictures in general. 256x256 is the minimum, I never use over 1k by 1k but I don’t know the true AppImage limits for this.
Not getting that in Ubuntu environments I have tried.
I do see issues with controls on panels - after a few minutes of use, they don’t paint. Sometimes I can get them to show up by waving the mouse over them. Close, but not shippable as a sellable build.
. This tool, once pointed at a compiled Xojo project directory will package and output a Linux AppImage!
