Build Cozy Drive for the GNU/Linux

If your distribution is supported, it is much easier to use our provided .AppImage file

Install some dependencies

Get the source code from github

git clone git@github.com:cozy-labs/cozy-desktop.git
cd cozy-desktop

Install dependencies

yarn install:all

NB: to speed things up electron will attempt to download a compiled binary. If you are strict about compiling everything on your computer, refer to the electron build instructions

Build all assets

yarn build

Package it into a binary

yarn dist

Run it

mkdir /opt/cozydrive # you can change this path
cp ./dist/CozyDrive-*.AppImage /opts/cozydrive/CozyDrive.AppImage
chmod +x /opt/cozydrive/CozyDrive.AppImage
/opt/cozydrive/CozyDrive.AppImage

Note: When a new version gets out, the application will attempt to update itself but it will fail, simply repeat the steps above to make it works again.

Contribute

We want to support as much linux distribution as possible, but we just don’t have the resource.

As of this writing, the biggest limiter is a bug where the AppImage does not build unless the GLIBCXX >= 3.4.21

We did an exploration to fix this issue but do not have the time to experiment and implement any ot the potential solutions.

If you have experience with compiling/packaging for linux, you can help us with a PR to setup build for your distribution’s package or by implementing one of the following option to make the .AppImage works with older glibc versions.

Option A: convince the whole chain electron-builder > prebuild > node-gyp to build against another libc version

Prebuild has a –libc options, not sure what value it takes, not sure which compilers it needs.

Option B: bundling libstdc++.so

Add libstdc++.so to AppImage build : https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder/issues/1985
But AppImage does not recommend it, as it might break on newer distro https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/wiki/Creating-AppImages#libstdcso6
So AppImage recommends to use https://github.com/darealshinji/AppImageKit-checkrt/ to only include the bundled .so if the distro is too old.
But we need to figure out how to include this within electron-builder
This adds a few Mo to the build, but insignificant compare to the whole bundle.

Option C: Building on an older distro should give us a working binary. But we will need to duplicate the works done on https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder/tree/master/docker to get a working build environment. And until we try, we have no guarantee it will even works.