appimage-myapp-appdir-template

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(some content may be outdate due to project holder was too lazy to update README (´･ω･`) )

My bash script tool to install or test windows .exe before bundle it into .appimage package.

---

Build

1. clone .git repo

git clone https://github.com/zerobikappa/appimage-myapp-appdir-template

2. remove unnecessary files

remove files which are unnecessary to bundle into .appimage package.

appimage-myapp-appdir-template/.remove-appdir-git.sh

3. update winetricks script(optional)

(optional) winetricks script bundled in this repo. If not work in your system, please get the lastest script and replace the script.

wget -c "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks" -O appimage-myapp-appdir-template/usr/bin/winetricks
chmod u+x appimage-myapp-appdir-template/usr/bin/winetricks

4. update unionfs(optional)

(optional) unionfs-fuse binary (from unionfs-fuse_1.0-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb)(for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS) bundled in this repo. Supposes to apply to the most of Linux distributions. If not work in your system, please download unionfs-fuse from repository of your Linux distribution and replace the binary.

# for Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install -y unionfs-fuse
cp -fv /usr/bin/unionfs appimage-myapp-appdir-template/usr/bin

5. get AppimageTool

source: AppImageKit

wget -c "https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/releases/download/continuous/appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage" -O  appimagetool.AppImage
chmod u+x appimagetool.AppImage

6. build myapp-template.AppImage

ARCH=x86_64 ./appimagetool.AppImage -n appimage-myapp-appdir-template
rm -rf appimage-myapp-appdir-template

now you get the myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage binary.

ls
###>>>
myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage

---

Usage

1. install wine

# for ubuntu
sudo apt-get wine

2. create a appimage.cache directory(optional)

(optional) if not manually create a appimage.cache directory, the .cache directory will be created in /tmp/, all data will be deleted after restart computer. by the way, you may find that you can use --appimage-portable-homeand--appimage-portable-config to create a appimage.home directory and a appimage.config directory. However, in this project, both directories will be ignored. $HOME directory will be redirected to appimage.cache/home/public_user directory and $XDG_CONFIG_HOME will be redirected to appimage.cache/home/public_user/.config directory. In order to keep the same structure between AppDir and appimage.cache directory.

./myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage --portable-cache

then you can see myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage.cache directory was created.

ls
###>>>
myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage
myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage.cache/

3. test to open wine with winetricks

./myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage -t
# or
./myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage --test-winetricks

this action will also create a wine prefix if no wineprefix was found in appimage.cache. default using WINEARCH=win64, which will create a appimage.cache/usr/share/win64 prefix directory. you can also create a win32 prefix withWINEARCH=win32 in your command:

## to create win32 prefix
WINEARCH=win32 ./myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage -t
# or
WINEARCH=win32 ./myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage --test-winetricks

win32 and win64 prefix are separated and will not conflict with each other. you can test your EXE in different wine prefix.

4. install your exe application

in previous step, if winetricks GUI is opened with no error, you can choose menu to open explorer and launch .exe file to install game. in my script, I setup a D drive(d:\) for installing software. please do not install software in any other drives. It is OK to install software in C drive(c:\) but NOT RECOMMAND. because it would be deleted if you remove the wine prefix (myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage.cache/usr/share/win64 and myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage.cache/usr/share/win32). actually, after you install the software in D drive, you will find that the D drive is setup to be outside of$WINEPREFIX:

## directory list
myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage.cache/usr/share/drive_d
myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage.cache/usr/share/win32
myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage.cache/usr/share/win64

if you want to clear the wine prefix but do not want to remove the files in D drive, just remove the wine prefix then run :

myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage --test-winetricks

to rebuild the $WINEPREFIX.

other drives' entries will be removed everytime after the process is ended.

5. generate exeinfo_profile

run:

myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage --exeinfo-gen

you can set below two options in this dialog:

1. choose the .exe file to be launch;
2. choose the location where the software/game will save config files in it. (this option may only use for standalone games, such as RPG games or novel games. after set this option, you can save a full-achieved savedata in myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage/usr/share/drive_d/savedata/ then use --savedata arg option to load the full-achieved savedata. you can set this option later if you do not know where is the target location.)

then it will generate a config file: myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage.cache/usr/share/exeinfo_profile

no need to modify AppRun script to setup the .exe path.

# TODO: kdialog bug, --ok-label and --cancel-label not effect, cannot change the text on button. now using "ok" button to replace "go", and using "cancel" button for "save & close".
# TODO: need to add zenity support.

6. run and test software

after generate the exeinfo_profile, just run:

./myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage &

then it will read the information from exeinfo_profile and launch the software. please do not use Ctrl+C to exit software because it takes some seconds to stop unionfs and remove temp files. if the software encounter error and exit, you may need to use kill or killall command to kill the process.

furthermore, you can run AppRun script directly from AppDir, for example:

(please exit the .exe first, if you already launch software/game at the previous step.) run:

./myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage --appimage-extract	# extract a copy of template from .appimage package

now you get the files extracted in directory squashfs-root/ then:

mv squashfs-root myapp-template
mv myapp-template-x86_64.AppImage.cache myapp-template.cache	# match the name with myapp-template/ directory.
mv myapp-template.cache/* myapp-template/

after move all files into myapp-template/, you get an empty myapp-template.cache/ directory.

try to run:

myapp-template/AppRun &

now you can check the myapp-template.cache/ directory again, to confirm what files was touched/modified by the .exe application.

7. bundle the application

before bundle your application, you may want to remove some unnecessary file.

# please stop the application/game first
rm -rf myapp-template/home	#will be create everytime, no need to bundle into appimage
# please also check other directories

you may also need to modify the *.desktop file and *.png file:

mv myapp-template/myapp-template.desktop myapp-template/other-name.desktop
mv myapp-template/myapp-template.png myapp-template/other-name.png
vim myapp-template/other-name.desktop	# then modify the content of *.desktop file

for more information, please refer below project to learn about how to bundle your *.appimage:

AppImageKit
Wine_Appimage
Create metadata

now you can run:

ARCH=x86_64 ./appimagetool.AppImage myapp-template/

to bundle your .appimage file.

other useful link

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