Create your own sheet music : MuseScore64.....in 'portable' format

[mikewalsh]

Evening, gang.

Coincidental, that's what I call it.

I actually built this a few days ago, but I see @geo_c mentioned this earlier on today in another thread. I never got around to uploading it earlier, so.....I figured I'd better pull my finger out & do so..!

I've posted about it here in the AppImages thread. Not just because it's built around the AppImage, but because MuseScore is one of those 'odd' apps that's hard to define; it doesn't easily fit into any of the standard categories, yet you wouldn't really classify it as 'Educational' or a 'Utility' either.....

(For those of you not 'in the know', MuseScore is an exceptionally good Linux app that lets you create, play back and print out sheet music....)

[Click to enlarge:-]

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This is the current, newest release - v3.6.2. Initially, this only wanted to run under Fossapup64, but attempting to launch it in the terminal in both Bionicpup64 AND Xenialpup64 revealed the usual culprit; it wasn't "seeing" its own, included Qt5 stuff. (*Yawn... I am getting SO fed up with this constant crap, but at least I know the 'fix' by now!*)

So; I stripped it down via use of the

Code: Select all

--appimage-extract

.....switch, which essentially turns it into a ROX-app. I've moved a few items around, removed a whole bunch of pointless 'junk' that's only there to satisfy the Gnome-desktop devs (WE don't need it!), created one internal sym-link, pointed the launcher at the Qt5 stuff by using

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LD_LIBRARY_PATH

.....and checked to make sure it actually ran before re-building the AppImage with Fred's excellent scripts. And that's made the whole thing at least 20 MB smaller than the original download!

So:-

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For anyone who may be interested, this 'portable' build should definitely run under Xenialpup64, Bionicpup64 and Fossapup64. Quite possibly others, too.

You can find it at my MEGA.nz a/c, here:-

https://mega.nz/folder/OCAiVDrJ#YYsv0bGOgFtcDULoD7uQdw

Same routine as always. D/l; unzip; move it anywhere you like, though preferably outside the 'save'. Click to enter, click 'LAUNCH' to fire it up. Extra scripts permit adding a Menu entry if required. The 'MenuReadMe' explains how to use these.

Enjoy.

Mike.

[geo_c]

@mikewalsh I've been running the AppImage downloaded straight from the Musescore page, no menu entry entries or anything, I just link to it with a symlink in my 'panel strip.' It runs just fine that way, as far as I can tell, it doesn't crash or malfunction. I suppose the drawback might be that it leaves files in the system after shutdown, whereas your scripts clean that up, am I right?

[mikewalsh]

@geo_c :-

@mikewalsh I've been running the AppImage downloaded straight from the Musescore page, no menu entry entries or anything, I just link to it with a symlink in my 'panel strip.' It runs just fine that way, as far as I can tell, it doesn't crash or malfunction. I suppose the drawback might be that it leaves files in the system after shutdown, whereas your scripts clean that up, am I right?

Yeah, that's pretty much the main driving force behind my developing the portables in the first place.

AppImages have always been my favourite 'portable' package format since I discovered them; unlike Snaps or Flatpaks, they don't require a special framework installed before they'll condescend to run. But the one thing that's always niggled me is that they still leave config files behind, everywhere you use them.

It's not an issue if you're running a single machine, with one or at most perhaps 2 Puppies, but when you're using the same item on multiple machines, often running multiple Puppies, it's always seemed daft to me that you have to set everything up again, every time you use it in a different place. I wanted a setup where you configured stuff once, and once only......then used those same config files anywhere. (Hence the sym-linking & stuff.)

Mike.

[geo_c]

@geo_c :-
it's always seemed daft to me that you have to set everything up again, every time you use it in a different place. I wanted a setup where you configured stuff once, and once only......then used those same config files anywhere. (Hence the sym-linking & stuff.)

Mike.

Yes, that's the deal. I've done a few things, like go and grab the config folder and put it in the folder where I store my appimage, then copy that to the other system, so you're basically taking care of that work with scripts and symlinks. It seems an appimage could be made to do that in the first place, but I suppose it's not in the protocol. I know nothing about how those are created.

Musescore is one top notch open source music notator, in the same league as say Open Office is to documents.

[mikewalsh]

@geo_c :-

From what I understand of it, in many ways an AppImage is like an SFS package. It unpacks itself into, and runs from /tmp for the duration of its session. But because it's read-only, you couldn't include config stuff in there (well.....you could, but changes would never stick. You'd need to reapply those settings every time you started the application).

That might suit some people. But it doesn't "fly" as far as I'm concerned. The way I've tried to do it with the portables, your settings are always with you; the application can be moved from one machine to another.....and if you're running multiple Puppies, unnecessary duplication is done away with.

(When you're talking about something like a browser, with cache & all the other crap they insist on setting up, duplicating all that multiple times can soon add up to several GB of unnecessarily wasted space.)

Think about it.....

Mike.

[geo_c]

Thanks a million for this one @mikewalsh! It will allow me to keep my new mircojack pupsave close to it's stunning 400MB size.

[geo_c]

Hey @mikewalsh,

I gotta check this out:

I have both your portable version and appimage of mscore3.6. I can just grab the v4 appimage and run it, but what does it take to turn into a portable? Do you normally have to compile it first? Or extract it from the appimage?

I downloaded that appimage and booted it up in KLV, very nice, totally next level for them. I haven't tried getting the sound going yet. It's geting late.

[mikewalsh]

@geo_c :-

Mm, yes.....I see what you mean. Quite a sea-change. I think the way they've tackled the blank score - requiring the user to specify musical style and instruments before you even SEE the score - is something of an improvement. And I like the links to all the tutorials, too. Useful.

But there won't be much point my trying to create a 'one-size-fits-all' portable this time round. MuseScore4 has been written & built in a very much newer environment than 3.6.2; that would run under glibc 2.22, whereas MuseScore 4 requires at least glibc 2.29 (Disco Dingo-era), and correspondingly newer versions of everything else. It's also been structured differently internally. Which means there's only a handful of Pups/Dogs/projects that can run it now.....Fossa64, KLV, Vanilla DPup, probably some of the recent Dogs.....that'll be your lot.

It's the usual mindset; MUST run the very newest version of everything ALL THE TIME.

I'm looking at it now in my daily driver, Quirky64 - Tahrpup-era! - for the simple reason that I'm running it from a Fossa64 chroot.

Mike.

[geo_c]

I'm looking at it now in my daily driver, Quirky64 - Tahrpup-era! - for the simple reason that I'm running it from a Fossa64 chroot.
Mike.

Off topic, but this is the second time in 24 hours I've seen chroot mentioned in the context of running an application, and both times seem to imply running from a system and utilitizing another system.

How does that work?

[geo_c]

musescore has done an excellent job with the appimages. What's interesting is when I downloaded mscore4 there didn't even seem to be a choice for a distro specific installer, it instantly took me to the appimage.

Another nice thing is that the mscore3 and mscore4 create their own labeled config directories in /root, so it's no problem to run both on the same system.

@mikewalsh you're gonna want check out KLV-airedaleRC-3. It's really poppin'. I have 5 installs of it, and so far I've been able to copy the iso files underneath my fully loaded numbered upper_changes to update to the latest. I'm anticipating the ability do that from here on out, because I think it's very close to an official release. I don't use fossapup anymore except for my jackalpup remaster to run pro audio with jack.

Just about all of your portables run smoothly in KLV. The only two that didn't boot that come to mind were Xnview and Openshot.

[fredx181]

I've been running the AppImage downloaded straight from the Musescore page, no menu entry entries or anything, I just link to it with a symlink in my 'panel strip.' It runs just fine that way, as far as I can tell, it doesn't crash or malfunction. I suppose the drawback might be that it leaves files in the system after shutdown, whereas your scripts clean that up, am I right?

Yeah, Mike has developed a way that the configs and cache etc.. are at the same level as the appimage, when running the LAUNCH script.

FYI. perhaps useful to know, it goes for recent appimages in general, that if you create a directory next to the appimage: <appimage-name>.home the configs etc... go there, rather than in your $HOME directory.
So in this case of Musescore it would be creating a dir named MuseScore64.home , then running/clicking the appimage MuseScore64 directly, the configs files go in there, so truly portable, won't touch your $HOME dir.

[mikewalsh]

@geo_c :-

I was around during the KLV 'alpha' phase, and the early half of the 'beta' phase.....but then I kinda lost interest in it. I'm not immensely 'technical-minded', and all the developer discussion was just going over my head.....on top of which, I was having distinct video issues in KLV with my Nvidia card, because it's an older one that's now unsupported, and I am NOT buying a new GPU just to run a specific distro.

I've been doing a lot of 're-working' of my own kennels, so I've been keeping busy in other ways.

I'll probably wait till the full release is out, then perhaps take another look. I appreciate the immense amount of work that Erik, Fred and all have put into 'Airedale', but there's a limit to just how much stuff I can keep on top of..! I don't have as much 'play-time' these days...

Mike.

[geo_c]

@geo_c :-
I appreciate the immense amount of work that Erik, Fred and all have put into 'Airedale', but there's a limit to just how much stuff I can keep on top of..! I don't have as much 'play-time' these days...

I'm getting pretty partial to KLV these days. Especially with this void kernel. Fast, clean, and nice looking. I think KLV is kind of "the future." That's why I jumped on it so early and stuck with it. My thinking was, when it's finished, I'll have it all figured out already. And even if it never got beyond beta 25, it still would have been a daily driver for me.

On another note:

As I'm living the glamorous musician dream, I'm spending Friday night in front of the computer using this new musescore4 to score some string trio music for a Christmas Eve presentation. That v4 release came right on time for me. The audio works out of the box, no having to set soundfont paths or any of that stuff.

However I looked into their Muse Sound feature that uses an installed app called Sound Hub to download free orchestra samples, and it comes in a .deb package, but also after reading a bit, it turns out the .deb package needs systemd to run. So I won't be using it.