Introduction

We have Debian installed on our machine and would like to run Neovim with the latest version of the Neovim Qt GUI. While a Debian neovim-qt package exists, it is not the latest version. To solve this problem, we will build Neovim Qt from source and package it as an AppImage.

Requirements

We will assume Neovim is already installed. Neovim AppImages are available from the Neovim GitHub repo.

1. Install Toolbox

We will have to install all the Neovim Qt build dependencies, so we will use Toolbox to build in a container, keeping our system clean.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install podman-toolbox

2. Download Neovim Qt

We start by downloading the latest *.tar.gz source code asset from the Neovim Qt GitHub repository.

Then, we unpack and unzip it and cd into the directory.

$ tar -xzvf neovim-qt-0.2.18.tar.gz
$ cd neovim-qt-0.2.18

3. Create and enter a new Toolbox container

$ toolbox create --distro debian neovim-qt
$ toolbox enter neovim-qt

4. Add deb-src to the sources list

Toolbox’s base Debian image only lists binary archive types in the sources list. We will have to add the archive type for source packages, as well.

$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources

We change the two lines that read Types: deb to Types: deb deb-src and save the changes.

Types: deb deb-src
...

Types: deb deb-src
...

5. Install build dependencies

We can install all the build dependencies we will need to build Neovim Qt with the build-dep option. fuse will be needed to build the AppImage package.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get build-dep neovim-qt
$ sudo apt-get install fuse

6. Add a build script

We copy a sample cmake build-script from the appimage.org online documentation into a file called build-with-cmake.sh.

Alternatively, we can download it directly from their GitHub repository with

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/linuxdeploy/QtQuickApp/master/travis/build-with-cmake.sh

We need to make two changes.

1. On the line that contains

    cmake "$REPO_ROOT" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr

   we add the variable DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE and set it to Release (per the Neovim Qt build instructions):

    cmake "$REPO_ROOT" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

2. On the very last line,

    mv QtQuickApp*.AppImage "$OLD_CWD"

   we remove the sample app name, QtQuickApp.

    mv *.AppImage "$OLD_CWD"

   (We could, optionally, set it to mv Neovim-Qt*.AppImage "$OLD_CWD", but for our case, it’s not necessary).

7. Run the build script

We make the script runnable and then run it.

$ chmod +x build-with-cmake.sh
$ ./build-with-cmake.sh

8. Test-run the AppImage

We should now have an AppImage package in our directory that we can run.

$ ./Neovim-Qt-x86_64.AppImage

When we run it we should see Neovim open in a new GUI window.

9. Exit the Toolbox container

$ exit
logout

The Toolbox container is still running. We can stop it with

$ podman stop neovim-qt

10. Add the package to our user-specific executable directory

According to the XDG Base Directory Specification, user-specific executables belong in $HOME/.local/bin. We will place our AppImage in its own directory in ~/.local/neovim-qt and create a symlink to it in ~/.local/bin.

$ mkdir ~/.local/neovim-qt
$ mv ./Neovim-Qt-x86_64.AppImage ~/.local/neovim-qt
$ ln -s ~/.local/neovim-qt/Neovim-Qt-x86_64.AppImage ~/.local/bin/nvim-qt

We can now run it by calling nvim-qt directly from the command line.

$ nvim-qt --version
NVIM-QT v0.2.18.0
Build type: Release
Compilation: -Wall -Wextra -Wno-unused-parameter -Wunused-variable
Qt Version: 5.15.8
...

11. Add Neovim Qt to the applications menu

We simply need to copy the .desktop file from the source directory.

$ cp src/gui/nvim-qt.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/

12. Add an icon

And finally, we copy over the icon from the source directory as well.

$ mkdir ~/.local/neovim-qt/icons
$ cp third-party/neovim.png ~/.local/neovim-qt/icons/nvim-qt.png
$ mkdir -p ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/192x192/apps
$ ln -s ~/.local/neovim-qt/icons/nvim-qt.png ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/192x192/apps/
$ xdg-icon-resource forceupdate --mode user

Conclusion

When we search for neovim in our applications menu, we should now see an entry we can use to start our new Neovim Qt AppImage.