Cannot run appimagetool without an icon

[hirrolot]

Recently I was trying to compile my application that hasn't got an icon:

$ cat helloworld.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=hello-world-appimage

$ ARCH="x86_64" ./../appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage myapp.AppDir
appimagetool, continuous build (commit 225057b), build 1874 built on 2018-10-21 12:21:27 UTC
Using architecture x86_64
/home/gymmasssorla/Desktop/hello-world-appimage should be packaged as hello-world-appimage-x86_64.AppImage
Icon entry not found in desktop file
(null){.png,.svg,.svgz,.xpm} defined in desktop file but not found
For example, you could put a 256x256 pixel png into
/home/gymmasssorla/Desktop/hello-world-appimage/

How to solve this problem? I just want to keep my app without an icon.

[probonopd]

Works as designed. An icon is required.

[KittenEvil]

Works as designed. An icon is required.

Specifications say otherwise: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html that the icon is optional. Why do you consider it required?

[probonopd]

It is optional for desktop files, but it is mandatory for AppImages produced by appimagetool because we want to provide a good user experience. AppImage was conceived with GUI applications in mind, and for those an icon is considered good practice. (Granted, you can also package CLI tools with Terminal=true, but this really never was our focus.)

[probonopd]

Now, a possible workaround is touch usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/appname.svg in the AppDir, and using Icon=appname.