Gear Lever can't launch Grist Desktop

[slimhk45]

Hello, I installed Grist Desktop with Gear Lever and the app didn't start until I removed --no-sandbox %U in command-line arguments. Can you explain what this line is used for and why Grist Desktop can't start with it (it is the default option set by Gear Lever)?

[paulfitz]

the app didn't start

Did you get any specific error messages?

[slimhk45]

the app didn't start

Did you get any specific error messages?

It just doesn't start by default. No specific error message thrown.

[paulfitz]

Hmm if I try this from the command line I get this error:

$ ~/Downloads/grist-desktop-0.3.0-linux-x86_64.AppImage --no-sandbox
error: unknown option '--no-sandbox'

I'm unfamiliar with Gear Lever and I don't know what %U is or what it is trying to achieve here.

[mpsijm]

Can confirm this issue, we also ran into this at the AUR package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/grist-desktop-bin#comment-1025396

It looks like the released .AppImage file has a malformed .desktop file. When running ./grist-desktop-0.3.2-linux-x86_64.AppImage --appimage-extract, the contents of squashfs-root/grist-desktop.desktop file are like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Grist Desktop
Exec=AppRun --no-sandbox %U
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=grist-desktop
StartupWMClass=Grist Desktop
X-AppImage-Version=0.3.2
Comment=Grist Desktop
Categories=Development;

I'm not sure how the packaging of the .AppImage works, but it looks like the --no-sandbox argument is added to the .desktop file during this build already.

In the AUR package, we patched the .desktop file to remove the --no-sandbox argument, but this should probably happen in Grist's build directly, since it can be reproduced on other platforms as well.

I don't know what %U is or what it is trying to achieve here.

Most .desktop files have this. It represents the list of URLs with which the application is launched by the user. See the specification: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/exec-variables.html

[paulfitz]

Thanks for the help understanding this @mpsijm ! Desktop packaging happens here: https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-desktop/blob/153fd05d5201943a24d7f2a623c0b76c54a2f331/.github/workflows/package.yml#L125 Which is just running: https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-desktop/blob/153fd05d5201943a24d7f2a623c0b76c54a2f331/scripts/ci.sh#L21

So maybe we're on a bad version of ... something or other.

[mpsijm]

That could be? If you don't change anything about the .desktop file in your build process (which I believe is the case), then maybe you could try to upgrade the dependencies in https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-desktop/blob/main/ext/package.json for the next release, to see if that results in an updated default .desktop file 🙂 At least, electron could be upgraded from 30 to 36, and electron-builder from 25 to 26.

[rambip]

I can confirm this is a problem. The appimage launcher tool also expects this argument

[almereyda]

Also occuring with appimaged: