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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Building and distributing binaries (programming.dev)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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It's been a long day and I'm probably not in the best state of mind to be asking this question, but have you guys solved packaging yet?

I want to ship an executable with supporting files in a compressed archive, much like the Windows exe-in-a-zip pattern. I can cross-compile a Win32 C program using MinGW that will always use baseline Win32 functionality, but if I try to build for Linux I run into the whole dependency versioning situation, specifically glibc fixing its symbol version to whichever Linux I happen to be building from at the time. But if I try to static link with musl, the expectation is that everything is static linked, including system libraries that really shouldn't be.

AppImage is in the ballpark of what I'm looking for, and I've heard that Zig works as a compatibility-enhancing frontend if you're compiling C. I'd just like something simple that runs 99% of the time for non-technical end users and isn't bloated with dependencies I can't keep track of. (No containers.) Is this easily achievable?

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sorry to interrupt but I want to point out that Flatpaks are not containers. It is just sandboxed with bubblewrap which isn't the same thing. It is closer to chroot and firejail.

For desktop containers use Podman and Distrobox

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Flatpak absolutely does use containers for sandboxing. Bubblewrap is wrapper for Linux namespaces. Containers is just another name for the underlying kernel technology called namespaces. Same goes for Docker, LXC, Podman, systemd-nspawn, Firejail, etc. It's all just userland frontends for kernel namespaces. man bwrap, you can also use the generic unshare to create them and nsenter to enter those same namespaces. It's cool technology, it's very easy to use, a simple flag on your exec or opening of an existing fd is all that is required. I used to work on one of the many userland frontend, even have gotten a couple PRs from Jess Fraz who was one of the core Docker devs. Userns still scares the shit out of me (pretty much every single escape has come from them).

Here's a fun experiment for you: create a root fs using debootstrap and then enter it using unshare and chroot! Tada! Container!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I don't believe a chroot is a container. You are just switching root for the process. The same thing happens when you boot with a initramfs

It also might just be a terminology difference

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

No a chroot is indeed not a container/namespace. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Flatpak isn't a chroot and what I suggest you try isn't either.