Building deb package on Raspberry Pi 5

[ansluk]

I wanted an epub reader with video/audio support on the raspberry pi 5, but knowing nothing of nodejs/npm/electron it wasn't immediately clear to me how to get thorium reader installed.
The steps I took to get it running on Raspberry Pi OS bookworm 64-bit are listed below in case someone else has problems building a deb.

sudo apt-get install npm
sudo apt-get install ruby
sudo gem install fpm
git clone https://github.com/edrlab/thorium-reader.git
cd thorium-reader/

Change architecture to arm64 and add the USE_SYSTEM_FPM environment variable to the package:linux line in the package.json file:

"package:linux": "cross-env DEBUG=* CSC_IDENTITY_AUTO_DISCOVERY=false USE_SYSTEM_FPM=true electron-builder --linux --arm64 --publish never"

USE_SYSTEM_FPM=true is necessary to not automatically download the wrong version (x86) of fpm.
(https://www.beekeeperstudio.io/blog/electron-apps-for-arm-and-raspberry-pi)

npm i --arch=arm64
npm run package:linux
sudo apt install ./release/EDRLab.ThoriumReader_2.4.0-alpha.1_arm64.deb

[danielweck]

Thorium's Docker builder for Linux also uses the USE_SYSTEM_FPM trick:

https://github.com/edrlab/thorium-reader/blob/7e60288f293a796ef7c59584d889b73f6db74a55/Dockerfile#L124C29-L124C46

thorium-reader/Dockerfile

Lines 46 to 51 in 7e60288

	# Could not open '/lib/ld-linux.so.2': No such file or directory
	# FPM x86 fallback in ElectronBuilder :(
	# https://github.com/develar/app-builder/issues/85#issue-1443790296
	# https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/6063#issuecomment-1307001166
	# apt-get install -y ruby-dev && gem i fpm -f && fpm --version
	# export USE_SYSTEM_FPM=true

[danielweck]

...and as for ARM64 the Docker script automatically switches architecture based on the host platform (this was mainly created to generate Linux releases from MacOS Intel / AppleSilicon):

thorium-reader/docker.sh

Lines 3 to 8 in 7e60288

	if [[ $(uname -m) == 'arm64' ]]; then
	rm -f ./package.json.original
	cp ./package.json ./package.json.original
	sed 's/x64/arm64/g' ./package.json > ./package.json.new && mv ./package.json.new ./package.json
	sed 's/linux-unpacked/linux-arm64-unpacked/g' ./package.json > ./package.json.new && mv ./package.json.new ./package.json
	fi