Best way to package an AIR Application for Linux?

[asdasda40448646]

Hello all,

We are trying to figure out the best way to package our application for Linux users. Looks like Linux support was officially dropped over 5 years ago, so what kind of workarounds do we have by now?

Option 1- The windows version of our application was built with Flash CC using the "Application with runtime embedded (e.g. captive runtime) option, and it runs 95% fine on Linux using Wine on the exe file. The only issue is that the smoothing / antialiasing is turned off, which makes text pixelated. If this is a common known issue and there is a workaround, perhaps we can just use this approach?

Option 2- We could try to make a native linux installer using AIR SDK 2.6, but we had trouble even getting AIR installed on our linux distros. Biggest downside is, AIR 2.6 doesn't have the captive runtime option (afaik that option came with AIR 3.0), so the user will have to download AIR alongside the application. Which will get increasingly difficult as time goes by.

Option 3- We could possibly try to make our own "bundle", with a captive linux runtime, and a "launcher" akin to the exe file the windows version contains? Presumably, the exe file is basically just executing a single line batch file that runs the swf file using the captive runtime?

Does anyone here have experience with any of these methods? Or any other suggestions?

[asdasda40448646]

As an update to Option 2: After hours of struggle trying to find dependencies that no longer exist, I have finally managed to install the AIR 2.6 Runtime on a Linux machine. From Flash CC in Windows, I have created an AIR 2.5 "AIR package", and trying to convert the air package to an rpm or deb installer using adt in the AIR SDK 2.6 of linux has given me nothing but very informative " " errors.

Anyway, I could at least install the AIR package on the machine. The anti-aliasing / smoothing problem is not present on this version. But the sound files all play with a 0.5s - 1s delay, and there is a pretty major overall performance hit compared to the wine version. Quite possibly due to downgrading from AIR 17 to AIR 2.6.

At any rate, since installing AIR on Linux is such an arduous task, I believe we can probably cross out Option 2.

[asdasda40448646]

Has anyone else got any experience with running AIR applications in Linux? I can't be the only one... Perhaps this isn't the right place for the question?

[zwetan_uk]

imho you are struggling with the creation of packages for Linux
creating deb and/or rpm packages require a bit of experience before it goes smooth

it's not AIR that makes building package an arduous on Linux,
it is an arduous task period

personally I would avoid running a windows exe trough vine
and even less try to package that

try to use snap packages
see snapcraft - Snaps are universal Linux packages

it should allow you to bundle the AIR 2.6 runtime for Linux
and your AIR app at the same time

while isolating those from the rest of the system

but snap, or deb or rpm or whatever else packaging
is not a 5mn tasks and will be always more or less arduous

[asdasda40448646]

> imho you are struggling with the creation of packages for Linux

Really? I didn't realize, I figured I was posting here asking for help just for the heck of it.

>creating deb and/or rpm packages require a bit of experience before it goes smooth

>it's not AIR that makes building package an arduous on Linux,
>it is an arduous task period

ookay?

> try to use snap packages, see snapcraft - Snaps are universal Linux packages

Took a brief look at snapcraft. Looks like an extremely convoluted way to zip something up. And since air and its dependencies are disappearing from linux repos left right and center these days, I don't think "bundling" it by defining it as a dependency would be a good idea at all. Besides, as I said, the linux 2.6 runtime doesn't even run the application properly to begin with, wine actually does a much better job of it overall.

> but snap, or deb or rpm or whatever else packaging is not a 5mn tasks and will be always more or less arduous

I never said I expected it to be a 5mn task. Not sure how you got that. I'm just looking for solutions for the problems I'm encountering.

> Did you try https://www.codeweavers.com? I never used it, but it seems to be promising.

So how does this work? We ask each of our linux customers to purchase their CrossOver software to use our application? Or we hire codeweavers to port our application to linux?

[Solano_Morales]

asdasda40448646 From what i understood, you package your app with CrossOver and can distribute the final package to the users without them to have to install CrossOver or Wine. The app will be shipped with all necessary binaries. It's not necessary to contract CrossOver to do that job, only if you wont to package yourself or your app isn't 100% compatible with their software. In this case they will modify CrossOver/Wine, so that your app will run 100% with the desired linux distribution. They offer a trial version and I think it's worth to test it.

[zwetan_uk]

I'm not gonna even bother ...

[Solano_Morales]

Did you try https://www.codeweavers.com? I never used it, but it seems to be promising.

[DQvsRA]

Hi. You can try to run Android APK on Ubunty, just search for it in Google

[Solano_Morales]

DQvsRA​ Some time ago I thought about to use this, but it would need chrome and it would expect more experience of the user to install it. Did something change in the meanwhile? Do you know if it's possible to run also the app with native extensions?

[asdasda40448646]

Hey, that's an interesting idea! I'll give it a try and see how it goes.

For now I have pinpointed the problem; the application (which is a game) actually looks fine when it's running windowed. I'm setting a 1136x640 viewport and then stretching it to full screen mode, and normally gpu smoothing kicks in at that point, but not in the case of WINE. So I'm now giving users an option to run it on a 1136x640 wine virtual desktop window instead.

The wine devs seem to be against the idea of offering a fullscreen stretch option for their virtual desktops (it's a feature that is asked about a lot thanks to older games running in lower resolutions), and due to my limited proficiency in linux I could not find a way to stretch the window through other means. (I tinkered with compizconfig a bit but couldn't get a satisfactory result. I also don't want to change the user's desktop resolution.)

Anyway, let's see how this android idea goes. Thanks.