Bread

Install, update, remove & run AppImage from GitHub using your CLI. (Fork of AppImage ClI Tool)

Features

• Install from the GitHub Releases
• Automatically Integrate App To Desktop When Installing/Updating
• Run Applications From Remote Without Installing Them
• Update with ease

Getting Started

Installation

Arch Linux & it's Derivatives

you can use this step if your distribution does provide libappimage v1.0.0 or greater, which is the case on Arch Linux & it's Derivatives, kaOS, KDE Neon, Parabola Linux

install libappimage dependency

pacman -S libappimage

then install bread

sudo curl -L https://github.com/pegvin/bread/releases/download/v0.7.2/bread-0.7.2-x86_64 -o /usr/local/bin/bread && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/bread

Debian & it's Derivatives

you can use this step if your distribution doesn't provide libappimage v1.0.0 or greater, which is the case on Debian & it's derivatives

get the appimage containing libappimage v1.0.3

sudo curl -L https://github.com/pegvin/bread/releases/download/v0.7.2/bread-0.7.2-x86_64.AppImage -o /usr/local/bin/bread && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/bread

Any version of libappimage will work with bread but it is recommended to use v1.0.0 or greater, You can also Refer to this list to check what version of libappimage your Distribution provides.

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Removal

Just Remove the binary

sudo rm -v /usr/local/bin/bread

NOTE this won't delete the app you've installed.

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Usage

NOTE

Often there are many times when the GitHub user and repo both are same, for example libresprite, so in this case you can just specify single name like this bread install libresprite, this works with all the commands

Install a application

To install an Application from GitHub you can use the install command where user is the github repo owner and repo is the repository name

bread install user/repo

To install an application from a different Tag name you can specify the tag name too

bread install user/repo tagname

Run a application from remote

If you want to run a application from remote without installing it you can use the run command

bread run user/repo

You can pass CLI arguments to the application too like this

bread run user/repo -- --arg1 --arg2

You can clear the download cache using clean command bread clean, Since all the applications you run from remote are cached so that it isn't downloaded everytime

Remove a application

you can remove a installed application using the remove command

bread remove user/repo

Update a applicationn

You can update a application using the update command

bread update user/repo

if you just want to check if update is available you can use the --check flag

bread update user/repo --check

if you want to update all the applications you can use the --all flag

bread update --all

the --check & --all flag can be used together

bread update --all --check

the -n or --no-pre-release flag can be used to disable updates for pre-releases.

bread update --no-pre-release

Search for an application

You can search for a application from the AppImage API

bread search "Your search text"

List all the installed application

You can list all the installed applications using list command

bread list

If you also want to see the SHA1 Hashes of the applications listed, you can pass the -s or --show-sha1 flag

bread list --show-sha1

If you want to see the GitHub release tag name -t or --show-tag flag

bread list --show-tag

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Bugs

• Icons not showing in menus until there's a system reboot
• Update Command Crashing

Limits

• Bread uses GitHub API to get information about a repository and it's release, but without authentication GitHub API limits the request per hour.

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Tested On:

• Ubuntu 20.04 - by me
• Debian 11 - by me
• Manjaro Linux - by me
• Arch Linux - by my brother

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File/Folder Layout

Bread installs all the applications inside the Applications directory in your Linux Home Directory ~, inside this directory there can be also a directory named run-cache which contains all the appimages you've run from the remote via the bread run command.

In the Applications there is also a file named .registry.json which contains information related to the installed applications! In the Applications directory there is also a file named .AppImageFeed.json which is AppImage Catalog From AppImage API

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Related:

• Zap - ⚡ Delightful AppImage package manager
• A AppImage Manager Written in Shell
• The Original Tool Which Bread is Based On

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Building From Source

Make Sure You Have Go version 1.18.x & AppImage Builder Installed.

Get The Repository Via Git:

git clone https://github.com/pegvin/bread

Go Inside The Source Code Directory & Get All The Dependencies:

cd bread
go mod tidy

Make The Build Script Executable And Run It

chmod +x ./make
./make --prod

And To Build The AppImage Run

./make appimage

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Build Script

The make bash script can build your go code, make appimage out of it, and clean the left over stuff including the genrated builds.

Building in Development Mode

This will build the go code into a binary inside the build folder

./make

Building in Production Mode

Building for production requires passing --prod flag which will enable some compiler options resulting in a small build size.

./make --prod

Building the AppImage

Bread requires libappimage0 for integrating your apps to desktop, which is done via libappimage, to make End user's life easier we package the libappimage with bread and that's why we build the binaries into AppImages so that user doesn't need to install anything.

To make a appimage out the pre built binaries

./make appimage

Get Dependency

To install the dependencies require to build go binary

./make get-deps

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Todo

• Switch To Some Other Language Since Go Module System is Shit
• Improve UI
• Make AppImages Runnable From Remote Without Installing (Done in v0.3.6)
• Work On Reducing Binary Sizes (Reduced From 11.1MB to 3.1MB)
• Add 32 Bit Builds (Currently not possible since DL dependency is not available for 32 bit machines)
• Add Auto Updater Which Can Update The Bread Itself
• Add --version To Get The Version (Done in v0.2.2)
• Mirrors:
  • ✖️ I Would Like To Introduce Concept Of Mirror Lists Which Contain The List Of AppImages With The Download URL, tho currently i am not working on it but in future i might.
  • I am dropping this idea, tho i've added a search command which can search for appimages from a central server API

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Thanks