linuxdeploy
Issues with wayland
Continuation of the discussion in https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageUpdate/issues/123.
Right now, AppImageUpdate won't run on a KDE Desktop that is configured to use Wayland (env var
QT_QPA_PLATFORMset towayland).I don't know Qt too well, so I don't know which version started supporting Wayland, and if it's feasible to switch to that version, but when that env var is set to wayland, AppImageUpdate will silently fail to start. There are two solutions:
- Compile it with a newer version that supports the
waylandplatform plugin;- Add
export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcbto AppRun.
Shipping the plugin shouldn't be a problem size wise:
> du -sh /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libQt5Wayland*.so.5.9.5
960K /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libQt5WaylandClient.so.5.9.5
968K /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libQt5WaylandCompositor.so.5.9.5
Both files compressed using gzip, they're around 600kB, with xz it's around 450kB. The question is if simply copying the files is enough, or whether you need to link to them. @zilti do you know if "just shipping" the files fixes the issue? If you want to, I can quickly build some AppImageUpdate beta AppImages in a feature branch that contains these files.
Wait, we need to make every Qt application's AppImage 600kB larger for giving it native Wayland support when in fact systems should be configured to be able to use xcb on Wayland as well? Is the trade-off worthwhile? I'm genuinely asking out of interest because despite the hype, all Wayland does for for me is make things slower, less compatible, and more cumbersome (graphics are lagging with open source AMD drivers, screencast tools don't work anymore, etc.).
Well, that's probably the reason why KDE decided to set the variable's default back to "xcb". Qt isn't able to determine on itself that it's possible to run as xcb when the default is wayland.
Graphics here work fine though with AMDGPU.
Updated linuxdeploy-plugin-qt to bundle the essential plugin wayland-generic and a few additional libraries which I'm not 100% sure are needed. The next AppImageUpdate build will contain the new files.
Confirms my experience, Wayland at this point is just adding hassle without any concrete benefit in my experience.