I am working on a nostr-project Futr written in Haskell. Since I don't want users of the application to install a bunch of dependencies manually upfront in order to use it, I digged deep into statically linking binaries with Haskell. I tried the nix build system, which didn't bring me to success, I only lost many many hours recompiling the same things again and again. My main requirements are secp256k1 (C-lib), glew and SDL2 (for monomer). What should have been "a not too hard task to solve" took me actually several weeks to find out. So I gave AppImage a try and it worked great basically from the first try on.
It's a two-step-process
1) Compile the haskell binary as usual
2) Build the AppImage
The resulting binary can then be shipped to the users. Compilation first (I'm using stack here): `stack build` - that part was easy!
First I need a build directory, my application is called "futr", so I name the directory "futr.AppDir". Within there I need two files:
"AppRun":
#!/bin/shand "futr.desktop":
SELF=$(readlink -f "$0")
HERE=${SELF%/*}
EXEC="${HERE}/usr/bin/futr"
exec "${EXEC}"
[Desktop Entry]
Name=futr
Exec=futr
Icon=futr-icon
Type=Application
Categories=Network
X-AppImage-Version=4702f2f
The latter is "only" for the desktop entry. Okay, so my binary requires some assets to live alongside the binary in the same directory, so let's add those:
cp -R assets futr.AppDir/usr/bin
cp assets/icons/futr-icon.png futr.AppDir
And all there is left is to create the final AppImage:
APPIMAGE_EXTRACT_AND_RUN=1 linuxdeploy-x86_64.AppImage --appdir futr.AppDir
ARCH=x86_64 appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage futr.AppDir
My project already uses Github Action, so I can automate the whole process and attach a binary to each release. Check the repository for the configuration: Futr Github Action
