• Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    So, like, dumb question. People here assumed that I mean AppImages, whereas I actually meant just a statically linked binary. Is that really the only reason why AppImage exists? So, that dynamically linked applications can be distributed like statically linked ones?

    • Ananace@lemmy.ananace.dev
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      4 months ago

      The majority of AppImages I’ve seen have been dynamically linked, yes. But it’s also used for packaging assets.

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        Yeah, alright, packaging assets makes sense. I’ve always been fine with just a .tar.gz, but having it be a singular file without compression is cool.

        I guess, since AppImage emulates a filesystem, you can also have your application logic load the assets from the same path as if the assets were installed on the OS, so that’s also cool.

    • ryannathans@aussie.zone
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      4 months ago

      You cannot statically link everything. Take graphics libraries and APIs for example, do you statically link against nvidia’s or mesa’s opengl?

    • ryannathans@aussie.zone
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      4 months ago

      You cannot statically link everything. Take graphics libraries and APIs for example, do you statically link against nvidia’s or mesa’s opengl?

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        Sure, but presumably AppImage/Flatpak/Docker cannot help with that either…?