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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Building and distributing binaries (self.linux)

submitted 5 months ago by lazyneet to c/[email protected]

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It's been a long day and I'm probably not in the best state of mind to be asking this question, but have you guys solved packaging yet?

I want to ship an executable with supporting files in a compressed archive, much like the Windows exe-in-a-zip pattern. I can cross-compile a Win32 C program using MinGW that will always use baseline Win32 functionality, but if I try to build for Linux I run into the whole dependency versioning situation, specifically glibc fixing its symbol version to whichever Linux I happen to be building from at the time. But if I try to static link with musl, the expectation is that everything is static linked, including system libraries that really shouldn't be.

AppImage is in the ballpark of what I'm looking for, and I've heard that Zig works as a compatibility-enhancing frontend if you're compiling C. I'd just like something simple that runs 99% of the time for non-technical end users and isn't bloated with dependencies I can't keep track of. (No containers.) Is this easily achievable?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

A solution I've used for the glibc problem, is to build on an older distribution in a chroot. There is also this project which might be of use to pick a specific version of glibc. The project README also explain how to do it manually.

As for distribution, I prefer something like makeself.sh, that installs to either ~/.local/ or if it is to be installed system-wide to /usr/local or /opt. The concept is just a small shell script appended with a compressed archive, it is easy to modify and even create by hand using standard tools like cat. This is a method widely used by native Linux games.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I've built a Dockerfile that does a hybrid of solution 1 and AppImage building.

It compiles the software with an older Debian release, then packages the software in a Python AppImage with necessary dependencies installed and the proper dynamic libs copied.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Using containers for build environments is probably my favorite use of containers.

I have an application I build for Linux, Mac and Windows and frankly building two or three Linux builds in containers is easier than the Windows and Mac builds alone. A github action automates it easily.

[–] lazyneet 1 points 5 months ago

I'll probably have to use chroot or docker. I tried with glibc force link but when I objdump -T I see symbols that slip through with newer glibc, even when they're .symver'd in the header. That project hasn't been updated in a long time.