Awesome

<h1 align="center"> <img src="make-portable.png" alt="make-portable"> <br /> make-portable| <a href="https://github.com/sudo-give-me-coffee/make-portable/releases/download/continuous/make-portable">Download amd64</a> </h1> <p align="center"><i>"The easiest way to make a glibc executable portable on Linux"</i>.<br> It works on any Linux distro with GNU Lib C 2.0, Kernel 3.x or higher</p>

How it works?

On build time:

This tool uses strace to fetch all file system calls and copy all accessed files into AppDir including the glibc. After copying files he wraps all executables inside AppDir.

On run time:

The wrappers import the launcher bash library into the root of AppDir which sets up an environment that forces executables to look for files only inside the appdir, any binary inside AppDir is called using internal glibc. This is done using libunion.so thats redirect calls to system filesystem to AppDir using this logic: if file exist in AppDir use it, if not, use the original system path. And finally libexec.so detects if an internal binary calls an executable outside of AppDir, if that happens it sets the environment variables as they were when AppRun was called

Commandline options

--icon= specify file to use as icon
--desktop= defines the desktop file
--appdir= defines the where AppDir will be located
--autoclose= defines how long the command will be analyzed (in seconds)
--lock-gtk-theme= specify the GTK theme that application shold use
--keep-config maintains user-defined configuration, the application must support the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable to work
--installable-package make an AppDir filesystem structure ready to package as traditional Linux packaging (.deb, .rpm, .apk...)
--build-appimage build an AppImage from resulting AppDir

Example:

./make-portable --appdir=LXTask \
                --autoclose=10 \
                --desktop=lxtask \
                --icon=/usr/share/icons/gnome/256x256/apps/utilities-system-monitor.png lxtask

Notes:

If --auto close= is not provided, strace will run for 25 seconds

Consider using 256x256 resolution for --icon= with PNG formats

In the --desktop= option, it will first be checked if the file exists, otherwise it will be searched in all directories listed in XDG_DATA_DIRS

If --keep-config is used all user configuration accessed by application will be bundled, make sure to reset all private info before using this flag

For using --build-appimage is necessary to pass --desktop= and --icon=

If --lock-gtk-theme= is used and on runtime the GTK theme is not found in AppDir` or in system, the application will use default GTK Adwaita

Compatibility with linux distros

Compatibility is at the GNU C Library level, so the resulting AppDir is expected to be compatible with all Linux distros with kernel 3.x or later and bash 4.x or later

Compatibility with packaging formats:

AppImage

If icon and desktop file is provided the compatibility is seamless

Native (.deb, .rpm, .apk...)

If the desktop file and icon are provided and the --installable-package parameter is used, the compatibility is semi-perfect, you only need to write the package configuration files, note that the package has no dependency (except Bash)

Snaps and Flatpaks

Is theoretically compatible but not tested

Known Drawbacks

May not work JACK

Credits:

@lucasew, for explain how to trace subprocesses
@mikix, for libunion.so