Electron-builder: Autoupdate AppImage renames file

[partap]

• Version:
  [email protected]
  
  [email protected]
  
• Target:
  linux/AppImage
  

When my app runs autoupdate, it overwrites the currently-running appimage, including the filename.
Example:
If I have my app installed as ~/Applications/myapp, then after autoupdating, the file becomes ~/Applications/myapp-1.0.1-x86_64.AppImage

This makes it difficult to run the app from a script (in my case, it needs to run at startup)

[partap]

I'm not sure what would be the best solution for this.

• Add an option for electron, e.g. appimage.keepFilename: true
• Automatically keep filename if it doesn't match a pattern, e.g. appname-{version}-{arch}.AppImage
• Modify publishing pipeline so that it leaves the version out of the actual filename? e.g. instead of writing out appname-1.0.1-x86_64.AppImage, use a subdirectory: dist/appname-1.0.1-x86_64-AppImage/appname.AppImage (or appname-1.0.1-x86_64-AppImage/appname ... unsure if the .AppImage extension is actually necessary).

The more I think about it, I like this last idea. When I first found out about the AppImage format, it seemed to me like a linux version of the Mac Application.app format, which I like. The difference is that Mac apps usually come packaged in a .dmg file for installation, so I would download appname-1.0.1.dmg, which would contain appname.app, and then copy the app executable (directory) into Applications or whatever. Unlike mac .dmg's, the existing AppImage files don't have any sort of installation procedure, they just run from ~/Downloads or whatever.

So, what if publishing pipeline generated a tgz file instead? An appname-{version}-{arch}-appimage.tgz file which extracts a directory containing appname (or appname.AppImage). For initial installation, the user copies that somewhere more permanent (e.g. ~/Applications)

This would require autoupdater to take an additional step... after downloading the update, it would need to extract the tgz file, and then do the normal copy and restart with the new appimage file.

[develar]

@partap Thanks for donation.

[ttlgeek]

@partap Hello, i was wondering if you could tell me how you managed to make the Appimage start on system startup ? And if you figured out how to keep the file name after app update ?

Thanks