Update appimagetool link in ./scripts/fix-linux-appimage.sh

[Drsheppard01]

update appimagetool link, which works without fuse2 lib

[savetheclocktower]

I was going to ask for elaboration on why this change was needed, but I see now that the old tool has had its last release renamed to “obsolete”:

DO NOT USE ANYMORE

Please switch to the new version at https://github.com/AppImage/appimagetool/releases/tag/continuous

This version is merely kept around for legacy compatibility. It is not recommended to be used anymore and is no longer actively supported.

Fair enough!

[Drsheppard01]

A big Electron builder issue that I can't fix, but will help help help you get around in your project is using the deprecated appimagetool instead of appimagetool with type2 support, which will allow you to run appimage without installing additional libraries in distributions like fedora and ubuntu.

See: electron-userland/electron-builder-binaries#57

[savetheclocktower]

So is the deal that the current AppImage that we distribute won't work on any distro that doesn't ship libfuse2? If so, do you have an example of such a distro that we can use to verify?

[Drsheppard01]

so, do you have an example of such a distro that we can use to verify?

Ubuntu since 22.04, Fedora since 41

[savetheclocktower]

so, do you have an example of such a distro that we can use to verify?

Ubuntu since 22.04, Fedora since 41

Luckily, my Ubuntu VM is 22.04.5, so I'll give this a test tomorrow.

[savetheclocktower]

Tried it out quickly… it's true that I needed to do apt install libfuse2 on my Ubuntu machine before an existing Pulsar AppImage would run from the terminal, though at least that's an option on Ubuntu. I tried building an AppImage from my VM on this PR branch… and it appears to complete successfully, but the resulting AppImage doesn't actually put anything on my screen when I launch it — whether directly or via --appimage-extract. It spawns some background processes but windows never appear.

This could just as easily be about some difficulties with running a build process on a local machine instead of in CI, but I'm on an Apple Silicon machine and we don't build ARM64 binaries on PRs. So I'll either have to produce a one-off PR AppImage from our CI somehow, or an X86_64 Linux user can verify.

[savetheclocktower]

Bumping this. @Drsheppard01, I appreciate the contribution, but I can't verify that it still produces a working .AppImage file on Linux, with or without libfuse2 installed. Let me know if I've done something wrong in my verification attempt.

[Drsheppard01]

Bumping this. @Drsheppard01, I appreciate the contribution, but I can't verify that it still produces a working .AppImage file on Linux, with or without libfuse2 installed. Let me know if I've done something wrong in my verification attempt.

For some reason I switched to Windows and my laptop is running Alpine (Pulsar depends on Electron and to build AppImage for Alpine you need to use patched Electron from this distribution first) and unfortunately I can't test it anymore. I can assure you that it is definitely not harmful

[savetheclocktower]

I can assure you that it is definitely not harmful

Yeah, harmful isn't my concern; just want to make sure it produces an AppImage that works.

If a Linux x86 user out there could try it out, I'd be grateful.

[DeeDeeG]

Okay, sorry for the long delay in testing...

This topic came up again and I spun up an x86_64 Ubuntu 24.04.2 live USB environment... I tested the Appimage from the latest official Pulsar Regular release (https://github.com/pulsar-edit/pulsar/releases/download/v1.128.0/Linux.Pulsar-1.128.0.AppImage) and the AppImage built in a one-off CI run with this commit merged on top of the latest master branch's commits (this link will expire soon probably: ubuntu-latest Binaries from one-off CI run).

Can confirm this PR's change appears to get rid of the libfuse2 requirement.

(Presumably because of the newer edition of upstream tooling statically linking libfuse now.)

• ❌ Running the official Regular AppImage (./Linux.Pulsar-1.128.0.AppImage) gave me:

dlopen(): error loading libfuse.so.2

AppImages require FUSE to run.
You might still be able to extract the contents of this AppImage
if you run it with the --appimage-extract option.
See https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/wiki/FUSE
for more information

• ✅ In contrast, running the one-off CI run AppImage (./Pulsar-1.128.2025072122.AppImage) "just worked." ™️ It graphically launched Pulsar and didn't say anything about FUSE.

[DeeDeeG]

Approving this based on testing in an Ubuntu 24.04.2 live USB environment, see comment above.

Thank you for investigating this for us and posting this PR! Thanks very much for the contribution!