Auto-connection of personal-files for walden

AaronPrisk · July 16, 2026, 9:11pm

Hey Snapcraft folks! I’d like to request the personal-files privilege on my Snap entitled ‘walden’.

name: walden
description: A minimal, distraction-free, local desktop blog publisher
snapcraft: https://github.com/aaronprisk/walden/blob/main/snapcraft.yaml
upstream: GitHub - aaronprisk/walden: A minimal, distraction-free markdown local desktop blog publisher · GitHub
upstream-relation: Owner of repo / project
interfaces:
- personal-files:
  - request-type: auto-connection
  - reasoning: The snap is a local blogging client designed to commit and publish blog entries directly to a user’s GitHub Pages or Jekyll repository. It utilizes the isomorphic-git library to perform its local commits. Access to the user’s global .gitconfig is required so that commits created inside the editor are properly attributed to the user’s global Git author’s name, email, and configured preferences.

store-requests-bot · July 16, 2026, 10:00pm

This request has been added to the queue for review by the @reviewers team.

yomonokio · July 17, 2026, 6:22am

Given the reasoning provided, I think the request makes sense. However, I’d like a quick clarification. I took a look at the snapcraft.yaml and noticed that the snap requires write access to the $HOME/.gitconfig and $HOME/.config/git files. Could you explain why read access wouldn’t be sufficient for this use case?

Also, could you please rename the interface to something like gitconfig so that it meets the naming criteria described here?

AaronPrisk · July 17, 2026, 11:46am

Hello! You’re absolutely right, read is sufficient. I had it set to write for an earlier build that needed it. I adjusted the yaml that I linked along with updating the interface name.

yomonokio · July 17, 2026, 12:15pm

Thank you

+1 from my side for granting auto-connectionto the gitconfig interface with read access.

jslarraz · July 20, 2026, 6:38am

Hey @AaronPrisk

I’m a bit confused here. Typically part of the criteria for personal-files auto-connection is that the file/files are clearly owned by the snap; in this case they are clearly now. Moreover, ~/.gitconfig may contain user credentials AFAIK. Thus, I think we should only consider it for manual-connection

@yomonokio could you please share your reasoning for the +1 in case I missed something?

AaronPrisk · July 21, 2026, 7:32pm

Hey folks, I realized that I don’t actually require personal-files as github is able to determine which user to attribute via their PAT. I updated the yaml, pushed a new build and all is well.

All good to mark this as closed!