OpenEuphoria

Portable interpreters using AppImage

• Posted by _tom (admin) May 11, 2021
• 953 views

An AppImage lets us create a portable interpreter.

• single file
• compressed
• only 0.02 seconds extra startup time

Worked for both OpenEuphoria and Phix

You need:

• phix install files
• the appimagetool https://appimage.github.io/appimagetool/

Create a directory (anywhere) like /CREATE
in this /CREATE directory:

• copy the appimagetool here
• make a /phix.AppDir directory
  in this directory:
  
  
  • create AppDir (a bash script)
  • create phix.Desktop (a txt file)
  • copy Phix256.png (an icon file)
  • make a /phix.AppDir/usr directory
    
    in this directory make another directory
    
    
    • make a /phix.AppDir/usr/bin directory
      
      duplicate a phix install
      
      
      • copy /builtins (from a phix install)
      • copy p (the interpreter)

1. ensure p and AppRun are executable
2. from /CREATE execute the apptool
   ./apptool.AppImage phix.AppDir
3. get
   phix-x86_64.AppImage

You now have a portable app:

• ./phix-x86_64.AppImage (will launch the interpreter)
• rename to pp (any name is ok, no extension needed, pp suggests phix portable)
• run as ./pp

A portable app may be installed as a regular executable:

• copy the AppImage file to /home/bin
  • check that .profile has this in the users path
  • now pp will run from anywhere

The installation details:

The AppRun file looks like:

#!/bin/sh 
HERE="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "${0}")")"  
EXEC="${HERE}/usr/bin/p"   
exec "${EXEC}" "$@" 
 
# change p to eui for OE 
# "$@" allows arguments be passed to interpreter 
 

The phix.desktop file looks like:

[Desktop Entry] 
Exec=p 
Icon=Phix256 
Name[en_US]=phix 
Name=phix 
Path= 
StartupNotify=true 
TerminalOptions= 
Type=Application 
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false 
Categories=Development 

To create the OpenEuphoria version the apptool wanted an "ARCH" argument: