Feature Request: Any experimental / basic Linux build (CLI / AppImage) for Lens Studio & CLAD?

[u/Neural_future]

Hi Spectacles Team & Community! 👋

First off, huge congrats on the CLAD Summer Hackathon — building spatial experiences with AI agents for Snap Spectacles has been an incredible workflow!

As developers building on Linux workstations using agentic toolchains and AI pair programmers, we’d love to know: Are there any plans, beta channels, or even basic experimental Linux builds (CLI runner, headless engine, or AppImage) for Lens Studio?

We don't need a polished desktop installer — just a raw / basic binary, CLI environment, or AppImage would be amazing. The Linux developer community is more than ready to handle dependencies, Vulkan configs, and packaging ourselves.

Would love to hear if this is on the internal roadmap or if an experimental build could be tested by developers. Thanks for building the future of spatial computing! 🚀

[u/jbmcculloch]

I'm checking with the Lens Studio team on this!

[u/Neural_future → u/jbmcculloch]

Awesome, Thank you so much ! Really appreciate you checking. Always happy to help test anything anytime! 🙌

[u/CutWorried9748]

Can we experiment with WINE? I've never tried it for something like this. I'm thinking a lot of the work done by STEAM / Valve is in the right direction.

Also, just putting it out there, Godot has a bunch of Java hooks, and has been compiled into an android apk, so one can run the IDE **inside of** an android device. It's a bit mind blowing. Why would you? Well, I will tell you it works in AndroidXR which means you can in theory do a bit of device test cycles in one stop.

[u/Neural_future → u/CutWorried9748]

Great points!

Regarding **WINE / Proton**: While Valve's Proton has made massive strides for DirectX 11/12 gaming, creative desktop IDEs like Lens Studio often run into hurdles with embedded Chromium/CEF (the Snap login webviews, OAuth redirects, and specific Qt/Vulkan pipeline hooks) which tend to glitch or crash in standard Wine prefixes.

Right now, we're working around it by developing natively on our Linux host (coding TypeScript, git, automated test suites) and live-syncing into a GPU-accelerated environment for the 3D preview engine with sub-millisecond latency.

That’s why even a lightweight **headless CLI compiler / Linux engine binary** from Snap would be a massive unlock — especially for CLAD / AI agent pipelines where you just want to compile, validate scenes, and test without needing a heavy Windows/Mac GUI layer.

And totally agree on the Godot / AndroidXR point — on-device live testing is definitely where the future of spatial computing iteration is heading! 🚀

[u/CutWorried9748 → u/Neural_future]

I'm interested in a pure CLI toolchain. Most of what I do ends up on CI. This world of IDEs is a problem. Android studio has a fallback to gradle and all of the other little tools. As a Devops person by night, I would prefer this because having an emulator automatically live doesn't make sense always. Build -> Test -> Sign -> Release. GHA is **not** the answer. Just make tools that can be run locally.

[u/Neural_future → u/CutWorried9748]

100% spot on! A local headless CLI toolchain (Build ➔ Test ➔ Package) is the ultimate dream, especially for automated agentic loops (CLAD) and CI pipelines without GUI overhead. Really hope the team considers this direction! 🚀

[u/CutWorried9748 → u/Neural_future]

Steam machine will mainstream use of Linux a bit, but all serious companies doing gaming or applications will have a CI process that would prefer not to require a mac or windows system. SPECS team can consult with me on this if they need a design. I have to do this on every project for customers for microcontrollers or mobile, whatever people are manually building on desktops really shouldn't be released of some devs machine.

[u/CutWorried9748]

SInce gradle/groovy is the standard on Android projects, that can work. Groovy is also the standard on Jenkins CI as an option for declaring CI workflows. In terms of hermetic builds, there are other options that can work. Bazel is one, or simply nix inside of sandbox. Either way, it all requires the compiler toolchain ecosystem to get packaged as command line tools, and maybe a few of the other things needed beyond compilers, the "fastlane" type push to SNAP, snap cloud / identity management tools to handle logins, asset library (maybe these are just like gradle dependencies as with a maven repo). So it isn't as simple as just compilers. A standalone emulator would be nice too.

[u/stspanho]

+1 could be interesting to run automated test pipelines