[Mourty]

Part 2 of #41. Stacked on #42 (ARM builds): merge that first, then change this one's base to main.

What it adds

• make appimage, built in the Packages workflow on both architectures and attached to releases with .zsync files, checksums and attestations.
  • It holds only Weir's three programs, icons, licenses and metadata: 18.7 MB on x86_64, 16.9 MB on arm64.
  • Its programs need only the C library and the system's PipeWire. It runs on systems from 2024 on: Ubuntu 24.04, Fedora 40, Debian 13 and newer.
• packaging/appimage/AppRun starts the window, or weir-daemon when that is the first word, or weirctl (that word, or a link named weirctl).
• Update information lets Gear Lever and AppImageUpdate find the next release.
• The workflow pins its tools: appimagetool 1.9.1 and runtime 20251108, by version and by checksum. A mismatch stops the build and prints the new checksums.
• The Arch recipe also lists aarch64, so Arch Linux ARM users can build Weir from the AUR once it's there. Nothing here builds or tests that combination. The recipe, README and CONTRIBUTING say it hasn't been tried on an ARM computer and ask for reports.

Weir, when it runs from an AppImage

It knows by APPIMAGE and APPDIR, trusted only when its own program file is inside APPDIR.

• Start at login writes its own ~/.config/systemd/user/weir.service, naming the AppImage. Weir marks it as its own and keeps it pointing at the AppImage when the file moves.
• An installed Weir beside it. That unit takes the place of an installed one. So an installed Weir removes it at startup once its AppImage is gone, keeping start at login on with the installed unit. Ticking the box in the installed Weir also replaces it.
• Restart Weir starts the AppImage file, so an AppImage manager's update takes effect, and lets go of the old mount.
  • It first allows the file to run.
  • If the file can't be started, Weir starts the running version again rather than disappear.
• The tray points the panel at the icons inside the AppImage, so the one-color icon shows without a menu entry. On GNOME too: the icon also sits at the top of that folder, where GNOME's tray extension looks.
• The application menu. The window offers once to add Weir: a menu entry and icons in ~/.local/share. Off Plasma, hotkeys need that entry. Weir keeps the entry pointing at the AppImage, and Preferences › General › AppImage adds or removes it and shows how to link weirctl.
• Bug reports and the update notifier say "AppImage" and how to update one: quit Weir, open the new file, delete the old. While an AppImage runs, a file manager can't replace it.

Also for every Weir, found while testing

• Restart Weir lost the tray icon on GNOME. A restart keeps the process ID, so the icon came back under the bus name it had just given up, and GNOME's AppIndicator extension dropped it. After a restart the tray now registers under its connection's unique name. Plasma, Cinnamon and COSMIC accept that too (read in their watchers' sources).
• Restart Weir didn't bring the mixer back when the window had started the service, on every desktop. The window closes for a restart, the tray asked for no window afterwards, and the service kept the window's --no-window. Now an open window always comes back, and with none open, the restarted service does as When Weir starts says. This applies to the tray, weirctl restart and SIGUSR1.
• Logging out and straight back in left Weir in the tray without its window. The service had lived through the logout: the systemd user manager outlives a logout when the next login follows within logind's UserStopDelaySec (10 s by default), so nothing starts at that login. With the RPM, Plasma reopened the window it had open; it can't for an AppImage, whose old mount is gone.
  • The service now watches logind for a new desktop login of its own user (logins.rs).
  • It waits until the new desktop's tray is back, or 10 s where there's no tray to wait for.
  • Then it opens the window as When Weir starts says, unless one is already open, using the user manager's display variables.
• The recording dot on the tray icon was misplaced on a scaled display, and missing on GNOME and Cinnamon.
  • Plasma lays an overlay picture over the icon itself, and on a scaled display copies only its top-left quarter. GNOME and Cinnamon draw no overlay at all.
  • The color icon now has the dot drawn into its pictures while recording.
  • The one-color icon gets the overlay by name (media-record), which Plasma draws right.
• The red recording outline was cut off on the first strip's left side, and on the last bus's right side when scrolled to the end: it's drawn outside the frame and the mixer's scroll area clips at its sides. The scroll area now reaches 3 px into the window's margin and keeps that room at both ends all the time. So the strips stay exactly where they were, and starting a recording moves nothing.
• Switching the tray icon to one color on GNOME drew it over the color picture until a restart, because the extension never clears a picture once it has an icon name. A change of look now puts up a new tray icon.
• The tray menu's icons.
  • COSMIC draws every named menu icon in one color, so color icons became white outlines (a white square and a white circle).
  • Show the mixer now carries Weir's icon as a small PNG.
  • The recording entries carry a red dot, which was a plain white or black dot on COSMIC, GNOME and Cinnamon.
  • The other entries name -symbolic icons.
• Hotkey notifications never appeared on GNOME, which shows no banner for low-urgency notifications. They're now normal urgency.
• Preferences now says, off Plasma, that "The desktop's popup" shows a notification too, since only Plasma lends its popup to other programs.
• The guide now explains hotkeys where the desktop's shortcuts only run a command (COSMIC on Pop!_OS): a hold-type hotkey works there only as a tap.

Tested

• 366 tests pass, clippy is clean, and each commit builds.
• CI: both AppImage jobs pass their checks. Those are a valid desktop entry and AppStream data, the .zsync file, weirctl and weir-daemon starting from the AppImage, and the update information read back from the runtime.
• Here, with the AppImage's contents squashed and started by a stand-in for its starter (GitHub's release downloads are blocked from my container), under Xvfb with PipeWire:
  • each way in;
  • menu entry and login unit;
  • moving into a folder with a space;
  • updating and restarting;
  • a file not allowed to run, and a mount that forbids running programs;
  • login hand-over with a stand-in systemctl;
  • the window opening from a systemd-style start.
• Restart with a window that started the service, under Xvfb. I tried a window open, no window with each startup choice, --window, and SIGUSR1. The window came back or stayed closed as described, and the service kept its process ID each time.
• A new login while the service ran, with a stand-in logind and tray watcher:
  • other users' and console logins are passed over;
  • the window opens once the tray is back, minimized when set so;
  • none opens when one is already open, or with "Tray only";
  • without a tray icon, it opens after 12 s.
• The recording dot: its pictures (rendered and looked at), the icon change while recording and the one-color overlay name, read off the bus.
• The recording outline, under Xvfb, with the Mic strip and the last bus recording:
  • every strip's and bus's edges are at the same x before and after recording starts, and where they were before this change;
  • both outlines are whole, the last bus's too in a narrow window scrolled to the end.
• On a headless GNOME Shell 46 with the AppIndicator extension, where I reproduced the tray failures:
  • after Restart Weir the icon is there again;
  • color → one color → color while running, each drawn cleanly;
  • the menu shows Weir's icon and one-color Restart and Quit icons.
• COSMIC isn't available here. Its status-area applet's source draws a menu item's picture as is and named icons in one color, which is what the change relies on.
• The maintainer's three rounds on Nobara and six VMs (Fedora, Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, CachyOS) passed apart from the problems fixed above. Still open: on Debian, Weir didn't start at login after a reboot.
• ARM: built and tested on GitHub's ARM machines only; no one has run it on ARM hardware yet, which the README says.

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