Build artefact: AppImage

[stephengaito]

Should we regularly build AppImages for release?

[stephengaito]

From the AppImage website:

Easy.

The key idea of the AppImage format is one app = one file. Every AppImage contains an app and all the files the app needs to run. In other words, each AppImage has no dependencies other than what is included in the targeted base operating system(s).

Trusted.

AppImage format is ideal for upstream packaging, which means that you get the software directly from the original author(s) without any intermediaries, exactly in the way the author(s) intended. And quickly.

Fast.

AppImages can be downloaded and run without installation or the need for root rights.

[stephengaito]

An appImage provides a single release object which can be used on a very wide range of Linux OSs.

While I have not yet proven it, I believe that an AppImage can take a pdf2htmlEX specific command line arguments specifying files in the local file system, work on them and then create new files again in the local file system.

More importantly an AppImage (on most Linux machines) will "just work" (no installation is required even if the local poppler and/or fontforge libraries are different from those needed by pdf2htmlEX).

Finally an AppImage can be built automatically by TravisCI and added as a release artefact on our release page for users to "simply download".

Hence an AppImage is probably much closer to what I see most users using.

[ctrlcctrlv]

Here's one: https://github.com/ctrlcctrlv/pdf2htmlEX.AppImage