AppImage¶
AppImage is a format for distributing portable software on Linux without needing superuser permissions to install the application. It tries also to allow Linux distribution-agnostic binary software deployment for application developers, also called Upstream packaging.
In short the AppImage is one executable file which contains both xonsh and Python. AppImage allows xonsh to be run on any AppImage supported Linux distribution without installation or root access.
Get AppImage from Github¶
You can get the xonsh AppImage from GitHub and run it on your Linux machine without installing it:
wget https://github.com/xonsh/xonsh/releases/latest/download/xonsh-x86_64.AppImage -O xonsh
chmod +x xonsh
./xonsh
If you don’t have Python on your host, you may want to get it from AppImage:
./xonsh
$PATH = [f'{$APPDIR}/usr/bin'] + $PATH
python -m pip install tqdm --user # the package will be installed to ~/.local/
import tqdm
Extracting and running from a directory¶
An AppImage can be extracted to a regular directory. This is useful when FUSE is not available (Docker containers, WSL1, older kernels) or when you want to install pip packages directly into the extracted directory:
./xonsh-x86_64.AppImage --appimage-extract # creates squashfs-root/
squashfs-root/AppRun # run xonsh from the extracted dir
The extracted squashfs-root/ directory is fully self-contained. You can
rename or move it anywhere:
mv squashfs-root ~/.local/xonsh-app
~/.local/xonsh-app/AppRun
To use the bundled Python directly (e.g. to install packages or run scripts):
export APPDIR=~/.local/xonsh-app
$APPDIR/usr/bin/python3 -m pip install tqdm --user
$APPDIR/usr/bin/python3 my_script.py
Or from inside the extracted xonsh session:
@ ~/.local/xonsh-app/AppRun
@ $PATH = [f'{$APPDIR}/usr/bin'] + $PATH
@ python --version # bundled Python
@ xpip install rich # install into ~/.local/
Building your own xonsh AppImage¶
The best way to build xonsh AppImage in 5 minutes is to using python-appimage:
mkdir -p /tmp/build && cd /tmp/build
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/xonsh/xonsh
cd xonsh/appimage
echo 'xonsh' > requirements.txt
cat pre-requirements.txt >> requirements.txt # here you can add your additional PyPi packages to pack them into AppImage
cd ..
pip install git+https://github.com/niess/python-appimage
python -m python_appimage build app ./appimage
./xonsh-x86_64.AppImage