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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] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Glibc preserves backward compatibility, so if you build against the oldest version you want to support, the resulting binary will work with newer ones.

However that's definitely not what I recommend to do. Better learn packaging and build native packages for distros you are going to support. OBS can make this a bit easier (if your software is FOSS), but any modern CI will also do the job.