Should appimagetool force certain checks, such as desktop file validation?

[MCOfficer]

Trying to make this issue as abstract as possible, though it clearly stems from #1171, particularly this comment.

As a user, my opinion on this is rather straight forward: I love programs that prevent me from shooting myself in the foot. However, this can turn into a hindrance when the check itself fails, and the user is stuck with a non-functioning program.

The most obvious solution to me would be an option similar to rm's infamous --no-preserve-root, to have the user explicitly opt into potentially stupid decisions. Full freedom for the user, no responsability for the developer.

Edit: feel free to move this discussion into whatever direction you think is most productive. I'm just here to get the ball rolling.

[probonopd]

My 2 cents:
appimagetool should prevent developers from producing faulty AppImages. Because at the time when a developer is actively trying to make an AppImage, the developer will be motivated to fix anything that prevents the build from succeeding. If the tools are "lazy" and let AppImages with known issues slip through, then we will see more faulty AppImages in the wild, which only weeks to months later someone will start complaining about, when the developer in question has long moved on to the next job/project/... making it much more cumbersome to get things fixed.
For example: Since the tool doesn't allow one to make an AppImage without an icon, I'm almost never encountering AppImages without icons. I believe the tools should go more into this direction.

This is why in my new experimental Go based implementation of the AppImage tools I will remove as many choices as possible, default to signing and having automatically populated update information, and enforce as many checks as possible with the goal (on can have lofty goals, can't one?) that only known good AppImages can be produced.