Checking plugs/interfaces before installing

snapd
1

Hi!

Is there a way to check, before installing, to which interfaces a snap would plug?

Thanks!

1 Like
2

One can use snap info to show some details from the YAML. That doesn’t include interfaces, though. And snap interfaces doesn’t handle local files.
The only way I know is to open the file and look at its meta/snap.yaml.

3

I was thinking more as a final user.

After doing “snap info”, and saying “hey, I like this program, how do I know what stuff will it be able to access in my
machine?”.

Thanks,

4

For me this is important, I would never install a snap from an untrusted source without knowing what permissions (interfaces) it has access to. snap interfaces only displays it for already installed snaps.

A manual workaround is:

$ snap download mysnap
$ unsquashfs mysnap.snap
$ cat squashfs-root/meta/snap.yaml
5

How do you do that with deb and ppa?

6

A deb/ppa has access to everything, it installs as root. I only installs from deb:s/ppa/repos from sources that I really trust. This is one of the nice things with snaps, you can move some of that trust from the packager to a trust in the sandbox.