Incorporate Linux/misc fixes from freixas/gamma

[wiverson]

I finally managed to create a release with Windows and Linux (no Mac yet).

My first attempt tried to use your maven-build-installer-unix.yml. It failed with an obscure error. It turned out to be a typo in my linux-jpackage.txt file, but it quickly became evident that using a runner to debug the build process wasn't going to fly.

I wound up eventually building in on Ubuntu running on VirtualBox.

It's good I did. Java's motto was "write once, run anywhere". Nope. I have a few important platform dependencies that caused the Linux version to fail. One of them was in the Desktop class you had mentioned. Even after checking that Desktop is supported and that the BROWSE action is supported, Desktop.getDesktop().browse() causes Linux programs to hang.

I also made a few changes to my linux-jpackage.txt based on the things I learned by actually installing the application.

The moral of the story is that you can't really expect to release anything on a platform where the software and the installation are not tested. But if I have access to all the platforms I support, then I don't need GitHub runners. They might be convenient for simple programs or if changes are deemed unlikely to have platform dependencies (you're always taking a chance).

If I don't build and test on a Mac, it's unlikely my software will work, so I'm not sure what I'll do. I do provide a "universal" tar.gz file, but that won't resolve platform problems.

I didn't want to have builds automatically triggered by push/pull requests and I only wanted one release with all the different installers as assets. I'm not using the actions, but I did make them all so they were manually triggered (it seems you might have done the same recently). If I ever go down that route, I'll probably build using actions, download and test the resulting installers and then manually attach them to a release.

While the GitHub actions haven't yet proved useful, all your work with the maven/jpackage integration certainly has.

If you have any interest in the changes I've made in the pom.xml or the packaging files, everything has been uploaded to my GitHub project, https://github.com/freixas/gamma.

Originally posted by @freixas in #60 (reply in thread)