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Yubico
AppImage release missing
Downloaded latest version (6.0.2) of Yubico Authenticator from https://www.yubico.com/products/yubico-authenticator/#h-download-yubico-authenticator.
I then failed to find AppImage release which is very useful to run Yubico Authenticator on Tails for example (was able to find older version on https://support.yubico.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016649039-Installing-Yubico-Software-on-Linux).
I don’t see AppImage release on this repo either… are you planning on supporting AppImage going forward?
We don't currently provide an AppImage for Yubico Authenticator 6, and have not yet decided if we will or not. One reason we haven't deemed it necessary yet is that we don't see much benefit over the binary we do provide, as it is just as portable and also includes dependencies. We would like to better understand what an AppImage solves that the current archive does not, so we're thankful for any additional insight here!
Hey @dainnilsson,
Just downloaded yubico-authenticator-6.0.2-linux.tar on latest version of Tails (5.7).
We would like to better understand what an AppImage solves that the current archive does not, so we're thankful for any additional insight here!
For sure, with pleasure…
Using previous AppImage release offered significantly better user experience than a directory with a bunch of files which, arguably, many would not know how to use.
Also, AppImage releases tend to bundle all dependencies and libraries which makes apps very portable and one simply has to double-click AppImage and things just work.
For example, one has to deduce that one has to unpack tar (requires some level of knowledge), then, one has to deduce (perhaps wrongly) that one has to double-click authenticator… which throws following error on Tails.
Could Not Display “Authenticator” There is no application installed for “shared library” files.
Then, one has to deduce that one has to run authenticator in terminal (most will give up at this point).
Then, following error is thrown.
/home/amnesia/Desktop/yubioath-desktop-release-linux/authenticator: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.34' not found (required by /home/amnesia/Desktop/yubioath-desktop-release-linux/authenticator)
Game over.
Previous AppImage was delightful to use on Tails (and I would assume on any other Linux distro when portability is required).
Please bring it back! 🙏
The portability should be the same: the same dependencies and included, and the GLIBC requirement shouldn't depend on whether or not it's packaged as an AppImage or not. These changes likely come from the architectural and build changes to the project with version 6, and are a separate issue. We likely need to use an older build machine to produce the Linux build to ensure compatibility with older versions of GLIBC. I suspect we introduced this problem in 6.0.2 actually, as 6.0.0 was build differently for Linux. We'll look into this.
When working as intended, the authenticator executable should be runnable from Terminal, or from File Browser, without errors. In this scenario the only benefit I see with the AppImage is not having to extract the archive first. I don't really think that is too much to ask of the user, it's pretty standard practice.
On the other hand, the tar archive allows additional files to be included, such as the install script which installs a desktop/launcher shortcut with proper icon and name.
I'll leave this issue open in hope of receiving more feedback.