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Is there a way to change update information in .AppImage file without recreating it?

Open szymonk211 opened this issue 5 years ago • 7 comments

szymonk211 avatar Dec 30 '20 18:12 szymonk211

Edit: Yes it can be changed without re-creating the AppImage.

probonopd avatar Dec 30 '20 21:12 probonopd

Of course it's possible, but none of our tools supports it, intentionally. It's a rare use case. With appimagetool, it's faster/easier to unpack, and repack with the correct information.

TheAssassin avatar Dec 30 '20 21:12 TheAssassin

Thank you, it is not a big deal, I thought it would be possible because it was stated in documentation: "this information is not put into the file system inside the AppImage, but rather embedded into the AppImage in a way that makes it very easy to change this information should it be required" - that's why I thought it is possible. Unpack and repack is a good way too.

szymonk211 avatar Dec 30 '20 21:12 szymonk211

@szymonk211 can you provide a link, please? If it's in the docs, I'd like to clarify that. PRs also welcome.

TheAssassin avatar Dec 30 '20 21:12 TheAssassin

Sorry, I had answered too fast without reading the headline. This is about update information.

Yes it can be changed without re-creating the AppImage. Basically you can use dd to write the update information to the correct offset.

Of course it's possible, but none of our tools supports it, intentionally. It's a rare use case.

Well... Great care was taken in the spec to make this possible, so that you don't have to re-create all AppImages in case you change e.g. a server domain. We should definitely build the tools to do it.

probonopd avatar Dec 30 '20 21:12 probonopd

Here is the link if you still need it: https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageUpdate#update-information-overview

szymonk211 avatar Dec 30 '20 22:12 szymonk211

For me it was natural to search for command line option that let someone change this metadata in script  https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageUpdate/blob/main/src/main.cpp. Maybe this is a good place to include this tool.

szymonk211 avatar Dec 30 '20 22:12 szymonk211