GSApp2AppImage: Bundle a GNUStep app as a standalone AppImage

Josh Freeman released GSApp2AppImage, a Debian script that packages GNUstep GUI applications as standalone AppImages for easy distribution. The script, used to build AppImages for PikoPixel, bundles dependencies and supports customization via environment variables. Freeman also provided helper scripts for building AppImages from scratch.

| From: | Josh Freeman | Subject: | GSApp2AppImage: Debian script for packaging a GNUstep GUI app as an AppImage | Date: | Wed, 3 Jun 2026 17:25:44 -0400 | User-agent: | Mozilla Thunderbird | Hi all, Attached is a script, GSApp2AppImage.sh, for Debian-based Linux distros that packages a locally-built GNUstep-GUI app as an AppImage. AppImage is a format for bundling a Linux application & its dependencies into a single executable file that can be easily distributed & run 1 . GSApp2AppImage was used to build the AppImages for the latest release of PikoPixel. It's based on a script by Simon Peter, the creator of AppImage, and uses his AppImage build tool, Go AppImage 2 . GSApp2AppImage's been tested on a variety of GS environments, with both compilers & runtimes, and most GS file-system layouts. Also attached are two helper/example scripts that each build-from-scratch a GAP-app AppImage with or without GS preinstalled : - Make GMines-AppImage.sh simple app - no extra build dependencies - Make AddressManager-AppImage.sh builds additional frameworks The helper scripts can be modified to build most other simple GNUstep apps just by changing the values in the first 22 lines. However, they aren't needed if you've already built the target app, as you can just use GSApp2AppImage directly. NOTE: By default, GSApp2AppImage copies the contents of the following GNUstep Library directories to the AppImage from both the System & Local domains : - Bundles - ColorPickers - Fonts - Frameworks - Images - KeyBindings - Libraries - PostScript If you've installed additional files in those directories such as frameworks for an unrelated app , they'll be included in the AppImage. To avoid bundling those extraneous files, I suggest running the scripts on a separate or virtual machine that has a clean install. The default list of Library dirs to bundle can also be overridden via environment vars - see Make GMines-AppImage.sh for an example. Cheers, Josh 1 https://appimage.org/ https://docs.appimage.org/introduction/quickstart.html how-to-run-an-appimage 2 https://github.com/probonopd/go-appimage sh6fwm0dI4x0.sh GSApp2AppImage.sh Description: Bourne shell script shz9Wpw7rqXf.sh Make GMines-AppImage.sh Description: Bourne shell script shOziUiPopXF.sh Make AddressManager-AppImage.sh Description: Bourne shell script | Prev in Thread | Current Thread | Next in Thread |