Step request: Gear Lever (AppImage manager)

[zero-ninetynine]

I use Gear Lever (Github) to manage my AppImages. It's primarily used to easily add appimages to a central location and automatically create .desktop files, as well as other management operations. However, it also has a feature where either the AppImage's developer or the user can specify an update url (either a static url or a release from github, gitlab and other sites) for each AppImage and Gear Lever can update them. I think it'd be useful to be able to update AppImages along with everything else using topgrade.

The tool is flatpak only, so as far as I can tell it should work on any linux distribution that supports flatpaks. It also has a cli which can be used to update the managed AppImages from the command line, which topgrade could use. It's invoked as follows to upgrade all AppImages: flatpak run it.mijorus.gearlever --update --all. The command shows a yes/no confirmation prompt (oddly enough it does so even if there's nothing to update) which can be skipped using a --yes option. An AppImage name can also be provided instead of the --all option to update a single AppImage. It does not appear to have a --dry-run or similar option.

I've been using topgrade for a while and it is incredibly convenient, so thanks for all the work!

[GideonBear]

Sounds simple enough, the only challenge is checking if it's installed, a simple require won't do. I don't use flatpak, is there a command to check whether it is installed?

[zero-ninetynine]

Thanks for the quick response! Poking around, flatpak has an info command that errors if the package id provided is not installed and provides info if it is. For example:

• Installed package:

$ flatpak info it.mijorus.gearlever

Gear Lever - Manage AppImages

          ID: it.mijorus.gearlever
         Ref: app/it.mijorus.gearlever/x86_64/stable
        Arch: x86_64
      Branch: stable
     Version: 3.3.4
     License: GPL-3.0-or-later
      Origin: flathub
  Collection: org.flathub.Stable
Installation: system
   Installed: 21,2 MB
     Runtime: org.gnome.Platform/x86_64/47
         Sdk: org.gnome.Sdk/x86_64/47

      Commit: a88ca3469207cd1ee8dea91aefaee3ce2f6af9ff60d12879afc10d555c9b44c3
      Parent: d327a95165ec779c57ff142bc9decff41c381c07565126cb36c54c56ad82c505
     Subject: Merge pull request #117 from flathub/mijorus-patch-11 (d32e19d511d4)
        Date: 2025-07-04 09:24:18 +0000

• Package not installed:

$ flatpak info org.gnome.Extensions
error: org.gnome.Extensions/*unspecified*/*unspecified* not installed

There's also a list command that lists installed packages. Using flatpak list --columns=applications:f to list the full app id of installed applications you get an output such as:

$ flatpak list --columns=application:f

Application ID
app.zen_browser.zen
ca.andyholmes.Valent
com.belmoussaoui.Decoder
com.belmoussaoui.Obfuscate
com.dec05eba.gpu_screen_recorder
com.discordapp.Discord
com.github.Matoking.protontricks
com.github.PintaProject.Pinta
com.github.finefindus.eyedropper
com.github.jeromerobert.pdfarranger
com.github.rafostar.Clapper.Enhancers
com.github.tchx84.Flatseal
com.mattjakeman.ExtensionManager
com.spotify.Client
com.vysp3r.ProtonPlus
de.philippun1.Snoop
de.schmidhuberj.tubefeeder
info.febvre.Komikku
io.bassi.Amberol
io.ente.auth
io.freetubeapp.FreeTube
io.github.nozwock.Packet
io.github.realmazharhussain.GdmSettings
io.gitlab.adhami3310.Converter
it.mijorus.gearlever

[GideonBear]

Thx, let's add require_flatpak that checks the status code of flatpak info <name>.

[yochananmarqos]

FYI, Gear Lever is also packaged in several different distros. The binary is /usr/bin/gearlever.

[GideonBear]

That means the flatpak stuff is only to be used as a fallback when require("gearlever") fails