Trouble creating AppImage for Claws Mail (also: Bug in quick-sharun.sh)

[bttrx]

Hi,

At first, regarding the bug in quick-sharun.sh: The code to build bwrap is never reached, if files $realbwrap and $target don't exist, which is always the case on a clean system. To fix that, I simply removed these lines:

	else
		# this should never happen, we are gonna exit without error however
		# since maybe older versions of webkit2gtk can be installed without bwrap?
		_err_msg "Something went very wrong here because bwrap was not deployed"
		return 0

Regarding my problem: I'm trying to build an AppImage for Claws Mail - The user-friendly, lightweight, and fast e-mail client version 4.4.0 on a Linux Mint 22 MATE virtual machine I had at hand. This is my first AppImage at all.

I used ./configure --prefix=/usr on Claws Mail (CM) and built CM including all plugins. CM plugins are .so files and can be loaded from within CM successfully. ☺️ However, when enabling fancy.so ("Renders HTML e-mail using the WebKit library") and trying to view the HTML part of an e-mail or an RSS/Atom feed, CM always crashes with this message:

** (claws-mail:1781008): ERROR **: 21:11:22.744: Unable to spawn a new child process: Failed to spawn child process “/tmp/IL=/x86_64-linux-gnu/webkit2gtk-4.1/WebKitNetworkProcess” (No such file or directory)

WebKitNetworkProcess files exist in:

find ./AppDir -name "*WebKitNetworkProcess*"
./AppDir/bin/WebKitNetworkProcess
./AppDir/shared/bin/WebKitNetworkProcess
./AppDir/shared/lib/webkit2gtk-4.1/WebKitNetworkProcess

and:

/tmp/.mount_Clawsremp10177115549921227055/bin/WebKitNetworkProcess
/tmp/.mount_Clawsremp10177115549921227055/shared/bin/WebKitNetworkProcess
/tmp/.mount_Clawsremp10177115549921227055/shared/lib/webkit2gtk-4.1/WebKitNetworkProcess

...when started.

I already read, WebKit (or webkit2gtk) is "a bit special", but maybe you could have a look. I uploaded the AppImage at https://www.bttr-software.de/tmp/ClawsMail-x86_64.AppImage (not very lightweight 200MB).

My make-appimage.sh:

#!/bin/sh
set -eux

ARCH="$(uname -m)"
SHARUN="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pkgforge-dev/Anylinux-AppImages/refs/heads/main/useful-tools/quick-sharun.sh"

# Configure the AppImage
export ICON=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/128x128/apps/claws-mail.png
export DESKTOP=/usr/share/applications/claws-mail.desktop
export OUTPATH=./dist
export OUTNAME=ClawsMail-"$ARCH".AppImage
export DEPLOY_GTK=1
export DEPLOY_WEBKIT2GTK=1
export WEBKIT2GTK_DIR=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/webkit2gtk-4.1

# Download and run quick-sharun
#wget "$SHARUN" -O ./quick-sharun
chmod +x ./quick-sharun

# Bundle the application
./quick-sharun \
    /usr/*/claws-mail \
    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libwebkit2gtk-4.1.so*

# Create the AppImage
./quick-sharun --make-appimage

[Samueru-sama]

You should not need to set DEPLOY_WEBKIT2GTK=1 and WEBKIT2GTK_DIR, These should be set automatically when an application links to webkit2gtk (passing the library to quick-sharun also triggers this).

You hit this becasue no bwrap was deployed.

webkit2gtk uses bwrap to sandbox itself, most people however don't enable the sandbox feature (it is enabled by default with webkit2gtk6 however).

quick-sharun adds bwrap to the list of binaries to be deployed here:

Anylinux-AppImages/useful-tools/quick-sharun.sh

Line 801 in e9e2fd0

if b=$(command -v bwrap); then set -- "$@" "$b"; fi

• What's the output of command -v bwrap in your system?

We know this all works because we explicitly packaged Epiphany to test all of this.

---

@bttrx Ideally you should use the template we have to package an application.

** (claws-mail:1781008): ERROR **: 21:11:22.744: Unable to spawn a new child process: Failed to spawn child process “/tmp/IL=/x86_64-linux-gnu/webkit2gtk-4.1/WebKitNetworkProcess” (No such file or directory)

I believe the issue is that I forgot to add the x86_64-linux-gnu directory. What happens if you run ln -s . ./x86_64-linux-gnu in AppDir/lib?

[Samueru-sama]

Should be good now

[bttrx]

Thanks for your help!

I tried again today using your latest script version. The 'fancy' plugin (fancy.so) now complains: ** (claws-mail:766244): WARNING **: 07:43:55.573: plugin loading error: Failed to find the companion WebKit extension /usr/lib/claws-mail/web_extensions/fancywebextension.so

strace -f ./AppRun claws-mail |& grep '/fancy'
[pid 1605546] openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/robert/AppDir/shared/lib/fancy.so", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
[pid 1605546] openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/robert/AppDir/shared/lib/sasl2/fancy.so", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
[pid 1605546] openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/robert/AppDir/shared/lib/python3/dist-packages/gi/fancy.so", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
[pid 1605546] openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/robert/AppDir/shared/lib/python3/dist-packages/cairo/fancy.so", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
[pid 1605546] openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/robert/AppDir/shared/lib/gio/modules/fancy.so", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
[pid 1605546] openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/robert/AppDir/shared/lib/claws-mail/plugins/fancy.so", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 20
[pid 1605546] newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/robert/.claws-mail/fancy", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0700, st_size=4096, ...}, 0) = 0
[pid 1605546] access("/usr/lib/claws-mail/web_extensions/fancywebextension.so", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
[pid 1605546] write(2, "/claws-mail/web_extensions/fancy"..., 48/claws-mail/web_extensions/fancywebextension.so

[Samueru-sama]

pass /usr/lib/claws-mail to quick-sharun.

[bttrx]

No change.

Even with:

./quick-sharun \
    /usr/bin/claws-mail \
    /usr/lib/claws-mail \
    /usr/lib/claws-mail/plugins/fancy.so \
    /usr/lib/claws-mail/web_extensions/fancywebextension.so

[Samueru-sama]

Alright that means something is harcoding /usr/lib/claws-mail/web_extensions/fancywebextension.so and it is NOT a string in the ELF 🤔

[bttrx]

The offending code is here: https://git.claws-mail.org/?p=claws.git;a=blob;f=src/plugins/fancy/fancy_viewer.c;h=9e59ca14018283792a1808d26713edabb1baa9cb;hb=HEAD#l1257

The path is build at runtime via g_build_path().

gint plugin_init(gchar **error)
{
	if (!check_plugin_version(MAKE_NUMERIC_VERSION(3,0,0,0),
				  VERSION_NUMERIC, _("Fancy"), error))
		return -1;
	gchar *directory = g_strconcat(get_rc_dir(), G_DIR_SEPARATOR_S,
				"fancy", NULL);
	if (!is_dir_exist(directory))
		if (make_dir (directory) < 0) {
			g_free(directory);
			return -1;
		}
	g_free(directory);

	gchar *web_ext_filename = g_strconcat(FANCY_WEB_EXTENSION_FILE,
		".",
		G_MODULE_SUFFIX,
		NULL);
	gchar *web_ext_file = g_build_path(G_DIR_SEPARATOR_S,
		FANCY_WEB_EXTENSIONS_DIR,
		web_ext_filename,
		NULL);

	if (!g_file_test(web_ext_file, G_FILE_TEST_EXISTS)) {
		*error = g_strdup_printf(_("Failed to find the companion WebKit extension %s"), web_ext_file);
		g_free(web_ext_filename);
		g_free(web_ext_file);
		return -1;
	}

	g_free(web_ext_filename);
	g_free(web_ext_file);

	webkit_web_context_set_web_extensions_directory(webkit_web_context_get_default(),
		FANCY_WEB_EXTENSIONS_DIR);

	fancy_prefs_init();

	mimeview_register_viewer_factory(&fancy_viewer_factory);

	return 0;
}

[Samueru-sama]

@bttrx Let me know if you have issues with this: https://github.com/pkgforge-dev/Claws-Mail-AppImage/releases

[bttrx]

Thanks, but the error remains.

./Claws_Mail-4.4.0-3-anylinux-x86_64.AppImage 
Gtk-Message: 07:49:55.679: Failed to load module "xapp-gtk3-module"

** (claws-mail:2870): WARNING **: 07:49:55.884: plugin loading error: WebKit-Erweiterung /usr/lib/claws-mail/web_extensions/fancywebextension.so konnte nicht gefunden werden

[Samueru-sama]

Thanks, but the error remains.

Try again

[bttrx]

Hurrah! 🥳 You're magic!

A few thoughts and questions:

• Do we need to worry about 'Failed to load module "xapp-gtk3-module"'?
• dillo.so plugin gives "Can't find the dillo executable in PATH".
• python.so plugin is missing.
• tnef_parse.so plugin gives "libytnef.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory".
• Path values are saved as, e.g., /tmp/p_e/claws-mail/plugins/litehtml_viewer.so to ~/.claws-mail/clawsrc file. Any chance to change that to just litehtml_viewer.so without changing CM's source code?
• Viewing an HTML mail using Fancy is slow compared to litehtml_viewer.so.

(claws-mail:4395): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 09:14:59.388: ../glib/gobject/gsignal.c:2572: signal 'resource-request-starting' is invalid for instance '0x555562533610' of type 'WebKitWebView'

(claws-mail:4395): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 09:14:59.388: ../glib/gobject/gsignal.c:2572: signal 'resource-load-failed' is invalid for instance '0x555562533610' of type 'WebKitWebView'
vmwgfx: driver missing
libEGL warning: egl: failed to create dri2 screen
libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to create screen
vmwgfx: driver missing
libEGL warning: egl: failed to create dri2 screen
libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to create screen

• I find your project very appealing. What OS do you use as a dev system to build the AppImage? Can you recommend some easy to install (just a few clicks) arch-based distro for virtual machines?

[Samueru-sama]

Do we need to worry about 'Failed to load module "xapp-gtk3-module"'?

No, it provides some theme integration for linux mint though. It can be added if needed.

dillo.so plugin gives "Can't find the dillo executable in PATH".

That's a web browser, I don't think we need to include it, the app can use the dillo from the host if they have it installed.

With that said first time I heard about this browser, looks intersting I will make a separate repo for it.

python.so plugin is missing.

archlinux package doesn't have it

tnef_parse.so plugin gives "libytnef.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory".

Will add.

Path values are saved as, e.g., /tmp/p_e/claws-mail/plugins/litehtml_viewer.so to ~/.claws-mail/clawsrc file. Any chance to change that to just litehtml_viewer.so without changing CM's source code?

Weird, why would an app save the path to its plugins in a config file?

Viewing an HTML mail using Fancy is slow compared to litehtml_viewer.so.

Well that's because you are using a VM and you are getting this error: vmwgfx: driver missing

Try using virgl as your VM driver instead of svga?

Anyways will see if I can bring back svga.

I find your project very appealing. What OS do you use as a dev system to build the AppImage?

Archlinux. We have docker images for it.

Can you recommend some easy to install (just a few clicks) arch-based distro for virtual machines?

You don't need to test in a virtual machine, you can just use distrobox and containers.

One important test we do to all applications is making sure they can run in alpine linux.

The only reason to use a VM is to test older kernels.