Add AppImage packaging for Yakut about yakut

[pavel-kirienko]

I guess we could give it a try. How long does it take for an AppImage to launch? Doesn't it involve unpacking the resources beforehand? If yes, does it add any noticeable latency when invoking the command?

If the changes required for this are limited to just a new CI workflow, we can accept that easily. Otherwise we may need to weigh pros and cons.

[jrrutlan-amazon]

Thanks for considering it. I think inclusion is as you say; a new CI workflow. I'll gather some performance observations and comparison next week so we can weigh it up more usefully.

[jrrutlan-amazon]

Some initial data from my Ubuntu 20.04 laptop (Intel® i7-10850H)
time yakut with my system Python 3.8:
real 0m0.651s
user 0m0.664s
sys 0m0.734s

time yakut.AppImage:
real 0m0.273s
user 0m0.453s
sys 0m0.894s

So the initial load is roughly just over double. But my entry point script into the AppImage has an option to drop you into a shell, from where you can time yakut:
real 0m0.487s
user 0m0.615s
sys 0m0.927s

I'd guess that the latency regardless of being 'inside' or not is due to decompression from the SquashFS file system. There might be options to not compress the AppImage, and I can investigate those also if you think this load time is unacceptable.

[pavel-kirienko]

I don't understand the numbers. Are you saying that running yakut takes 0.651 s while yakut.AppImage takes 0.273 s, over twice less?

[jrrutlan-amazon]

Oh my mistake - I've got my labels the wrong way round. So the AppImage takes just over twice as long to load. For clarity, here is the correctly labelled result:

time yakut.AppImage
real 0m0.651s
user 0m0.664s
sys 0m0.734s

time yakut with my system Python 3.8
real 0m0.273s
user 0m0.453s
sys 0m0.894s

[pavel-kirienko]

Okay. I think this is not entirely unreasonable, and those who care may always resort to the proper installation instead. Considering that the maintenance cost is negligible (just a single CI workflow), I think we should proceed.