AppImage only needs a shell script, which you can use to run whatever you throw at it (native, python, perl, ruby, java, wine, qemu...), the only difference see

AppImage only needs a shell script, which you can use to run whatever you throw at it (native, python, perl, ruby, java, wine, qemu...), the only difference seems to be it will use a compressed ISO instead of squashfs to pack the directory and later mount it with fuse. Additionally and optionally you can setup a small .desktop file to provide some convenience metadata what will be useful to pack the app easily, and an icon file.