pkg2appimage VS zap

The pkg2appimage script exists to do these conversions with many examples https://github.com/AppImageCommunity/pkg2appimage/tree/master/recipes

NOTE: I've built it using the recipe available at https://github.com/AppImageCommunity/pkg2appimage, added libunionpreload from https://github.com/project-portable/libunionpreload and some additional paths to LD_LIBRARy_PATH into the AppRun, just tested on Debian and Arch Linux... and works great!

Beyond all, my work is heavily focused on compiling AppImage from existing .deb packages through the use of pkg2appimage and appimagetool, as unofficial AppImage packages not present on AppImageHub are provided, but taken from fairly reliable sources ( Debian repositories, or in some cases a PPAs for Ubuntu). The sources are available via the -a or -w options of my scripts.

Does anyone actually do that? The official documentation says not to do that (see here). Also, the excludelist mentions a couple of problems that happen when certain libraries are bundled in an AppImage.

It sounds like there might also be at least some support for portable Linux formats on Mac: snap appears to allow installing on mac via brew, but it sounds like appimages and flatpaks cannot run on mac. that said, i haven't used snaps on mac nor have I ever heard of anyone who does so... so no clue if they work well there.

PS: yes, I know that better sources for this are already available, for example the Slackware repository and woolyss, but actually the more recent version, the 97, for old i386 machines is provided by Debian (ArchLinux32 has the v90, and other versions are quite buggy for this architecture, see this issue). Unluckily there is not a 32 bit version of pkg2appimage, if we had one or someone can fork better the main script, we can still have more appimages for old architectures, being many of my scripts for x86_64 wrote to support pkg2appimage (as you have already seen in my previous post).

If I have time enough, I wanna try to create a script that automatizes all the processes, also for you developers, but my knowledge is limited to the download of packages from Debian and derivatives or from Arch Linux to create these structures, I'm not much good in compiling these programs by myself into a chroot, I'm just an enthusiast.

Depends on who makes them, but generally everything besides this list

Brave doesn't officially provide any AppImages. There is a issue on GitHub tracking this, but it's definitely not their top priority right now. You can use pkg2appimage to produce an AppImage of Brave or use existing ones available on this GitHub repository. Keep in mind that these are unofficial sources that I don't recommend to use, but if you really want to, at your own risk.

Integrate zap with that repo and make it official. It will automatically download the appimages inside a directory 'Appimage'. You can move them anywhere else ONLY if it has a directory named 'Appimage'. In this case it is moved to an external usb.

Personally, on a debian based distribution I would either use the AppImage (you could even use something like zap to manage its version). Or, the solution I would and have personally used is to compile it from source. I am a developer, so I am biased, but the instructions are very simple and clear so it should be pretty easy to do.

That said, there is Zap.

Tho bread is github focused which is a big drawback as many software aren't on github, i discovered this program Zap Which was a appimage package manager like AM or bread but it's far much better than mine.

If you can download and install software from the web (which you also can do with debs and rpms btw), you can create a package manager to automate that from the terminal. You either trust a project or you don't, and if your don't the package format makes no difference.

NOTE: I don't know when and if to add new AppImages from the main catalog, also because a part of them is mostly broken and out of control. The AppImage packages compiled and managed by "AM"/AppMan are new AppImages that use scripts that also allow constant updating and recompilation from scratch, as if they were installed from AUR, using more reliable sources (official repositories for Debian and derivatives) . If you are interested more to the applications made available officially from the official AppImage.GitHub.io catalog, I suggest you to use Zap, Bread or the aforementioned Appimagedl. All these amazing utilities can be quickly installed via "AM" or AppMan.