AppImage: invisible window (EGL_BAD_PARAMETER) on current Mesa — bundled libwayland-* conflict, plus forced GDK_BACKEND=x11 and uim IM crash

[M4tEd]

Summary

On rolling-release distros with current Mesa (CachyOS/Arch confirmed), the 4.0.0 Linux AppImage starts with an invisible/blank window. The main process stays alive (tray icon, WWMM Image Server on 127.0.0.1:3469), but the WebKit web process aborts before rendering:

Could not create default EGL display: EGL_BAD_PARAMETER. Aborting...

This is the same crash as #33 (also CachyOS/KDE Wayland) — I hit it independently and did a full root cause, posting it here so it's fixable build-side. Related packaging context: #17.

Environment

• CachyOS (Arch-based, rolling), kernel 7.2.0-1-cachyos
• KDE Plasma 6.7.4, Wayland session (KWin 6.7.4)
• Mesa 26.2.1, AMD RX 9070 (Navi 48) + Raphael iGPU
• IMM 4.0.0 AppImage installed via install.sh

Root cause (verified)

The AppImage bundles Ubuntu-era Wayland libraries (libwayland-client.so.0, libwayland-cursor.so.0, libwayland-egl.so.1, libwayland-server.so.0 in usr/lib/), and the linuxdeploy AppRun prepends the bundled dir to LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Current Mesa's libEGL_mesa.so.0 requires wl_display_create_queue_with_name (wayland ≥ 1.23); resolved against the bundled older libwayland, that symbol is missing and libEGL fails to load entirely:

$ LD_DEBUG=libs ./integrated-mod-manager-imm.AppImage 2>&1 | grep wl_display_create_queue_with_name
/usr/lib/libEGL_mesa.so.0: error: symbol lookup error: undefined symbol: wl_display_create_queue_with_name (fatal)

Because the failure happens at library load time, it breaks EGL on every backend — which is why none of the usual suspects change anything (all tested): WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1, WEBKIT_DISABLE_COMPOSITING_MODE=1, GDK_BACKEND=x11, EGL_PLATFORM=x11, LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1. WebKit aborts before it ever evaluates its render-path settings.

Same root cause, documented and fixed the same way in other Tauri AppImages: espressif/idf-im-ui#755 (CachyOS), OpenAgentPlatform/Dive#265 (Arch/KDE Wayland), gitbutlerapp/gitbutler#5282.

Verified user-side workarounds

Either of these makes the window appear, fully working:

# 1) force the host libwayland (AppImage unmodified, survives updates)
env GTK_IM_MODULE=xim LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libwayland-client.so.0 ./integrated-mod-manager-imm.AppImage

# 2) or remove the stale libs from an extracted copy
./integrated-mod-manager-imm.AppImage --appimage-extract
rm squashfs-root/usr/lib/libwayland-{client.so.0,cursor.so.0,egl.so.1,server.so.0}
./squashfs-root/AppRun

Two more bundling issues found while debugging

1. apprun-hooks/linuxdeploy-plugin-gtk.sh unconditionally exports GDK_BACKEND=x11 (comment references [bug] Run AppImage: GLib-GIO-ERROR Settings schema error tauri-apps/tauri#8541). Besides preventing a native Wayland window, it does not avoid the EGL crash (see above), and it actively breaks GTK_IM_MODULE=wayland: im-wayland assumes a Wayland GDK display, so the app dies with gdk_wayland_display_get_wl_display: assertion 'GDK_IS_WAYLAND_DISPLAY (display)' failed → SIGSEGV. With the libwayland fix in place, commenting out that export gives a working native-Wayland window here. Suggest respecting a pre-set GDK_BACKEND or dropping the override.
2. The bundle's GTK IM-module setup selects uim even when uim is not installed on the host, which is fatal: Error: in load: file "/usr/share/uim/lib/sigscheme-init.scm" not found, then the process exits during gtk_init. .appimage not working #33's reporter hit the same thing on a uim-less system. Workaround: GTK_IM_MODULE=xim (or gtk-im-context-simple). Suggest not bundling im-uim / regenerating the immodules cache without it, or having the hook set a sane default.

Suggested build-side fixes

• Exclude libwayland-client.so.0, libwayland-cursor.so.0, libwayland-egl.so.1, libwayland-server.so.0 from the bundle (linuxdeploy excludelist, or delete from the AppDir before packing). libwayland must come from the host so it matches the host's Mesa/EGL.
• Make the GDK_BACKEND=x11 hook conditional (or remove it).
• Fix the IM-module cache so a missing uim is never selected (it is fatal, not a graceful fallback).
• Longer term: Tauri's new uruntime-based AppImage format (feat(bundler): Truly portable appimage (experimental) tauri-apps/tauri#12491) isolates the host graphics stack and eliminates this whole class of failures; several projects moved to it for exactly this reason.

[jpbhatt21]

Try https://github.com/Antonzlo/integrated-mod-manager/releases/tag/v4.1.0 for now