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?
You cannot statically link everything. Take graphics libraries and APIs for example, do you statically link against nvidia’s or mesa’s opengl?
Sure, but presumably AppImage/Flatpak/Docker cannot help with that either…?
Flatpak solves the problem with targetable platform versions, you just update the manifest for your app every like 6-12 months to target the new one
The majority of AppImages I’ve seen have been dynamically linked, yes. But it’s also used for packaging assets.
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.
