depot/third_party/nixpkgs/doc/builders/images/appimagetools.section.md

pkgs.appimageTools

pkgs.appimageTools is a set of functions for extracting and wrapping AppImage files. They are meant to be used if traditional packaging from source is infeasible, or it would take too long. To quickly run an AppImage file, pkgs.appimage-run can be used as well.

::: {.warning} The appimageTools API is unstable and may be subject to backwards-incompatible changes in the future. :::

AppImage formats

There are different formats for AppImages, see the specification for details.

• Type 1 images are ISO 9660 files that are also ELF executables.
• Type 2 images are ELF executables with an appended filesystem.

They can be told apart with file -k:

$ file -k type1.AppImage
type1.AppImage: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV) ISO 9660 CD-ROM filesystem data 'AppImage' (Lepton 3.x), scale 0-0,
spot sensor temperature 0.000000, unit celsius, color scheme 0, calibration: offset 0.000000, slope 0.000000, dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.18, BuildID[sha1]=d629f6099d2344ad82818172add1d38c5e11bc6d, stripped\012- data

$ file -k type2.AppImage
type2.AppImage: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV) (Lepton 3.x), scale 232-60668, spot sensor temperature -4.187500, color scheme 15, show scale bar, calibration: offset -0.000000, slope 0.000000 (Lepton 2.x), scale 4111-45000, spot sensor temperature 412442.250000, color scheme 3, minimum point enabled, calibration: offset -75402534979642766821519867692934234112.000000, slope 5815371847733706829839455140374904832.000000, dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.18, BuildID[sha1]=79dcc4e55a61c293c5e19edbd8d65b202842579f, stripped\012- data

Note how the type 1 AppImage is described as an ISO 9660 CD-ROM filesystem, and the type 2 AppImage is not.

Wrapping

Depending on the type of AppImage you're wrapping, you'll have to use wrapType1 or wrapType2.

appimageTools.wrapType2 { # or wrapType1
  name = "patchwork";
  src = fetchurl {
    url = "https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork/releases/download/v3.11.4/Patchwork-3.11.4-linux-x86_64.AppImage";
    sha256 = "1blsprpkvm0ws9b96gb36f0rbf8f5jgmw4x6dsb1kswr4ysf591s";
  };
  extraPkgs = pkgs: with pkgs; [ ];
}

• name specifies the name of the resulting image.
• src specifies the AppImage file to extract.
• extraPkgs allows you to pass a function to include additional packages inside the FHS environment your AppImage is going to run in. There are a few ways to learn which dependencies an application needs:
  • Looking through the extracted AppImage files, reading its scripts and running patchelf and ldd on its executables. This can also be done in appimage-run, by setting APPIMAGE_DEBUG_EXEC=bash.
  • Running strace -vfefile on the wrapped executable, looking for libraries that can't be found.