Classic confinement request for minicom-snap

[ruhan.vanderberg]

Hello there.

I’d like to request classic confinement for my snap: minicom-snap, which is a small snap that helps me and others on my development of serial-based devices, sending serial data, etc.

I would believe that the minicom utility is falling under the Terminal emulator topic, as discussed here:

Process for reviewing classic confinement snaps

Classic confinement review process Background As of snapd 2.20, snappy supports confinement: classic which allows the snap to run without restrictions. Future releases of snapd will also support a classic interface (name TBD) that operates similarly. Snaps specifying classic confinement may target the stable channel, but are only supported on classic distro systems (ie, not on Ubuntu Core). Because classic confinement snaps run without restrictions, use of classic confinement effectively grants…

The reason to gain access to classic confinement, is that minicom needs serial port access, which may/may not be available under the gadget snap connection (if any), but I would believe that it would work normally on a Ubuntu 18/Ubuntu 20/Ubuntu 22 OS install?

The snapcraft.yaml file is simple: https://github.com/RJvdBerg/minicom-snap

I’m also trying to make a Github actions build available, but it won’t allow me to release it, due to the devmode confinement?

[alexmurray]

For the majority of desktop users (which is where classic snaps are supported) I would assume they would access something like minicom via a USB-Serial converter. These devices should be supported using the existing serial-port plug along with the hotplug feature - see Hotplug support for more details.

Also I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that minicom is a terminal emulator itself, given that you sight the use-cases of serial-based devices and sending serial data etc. Please try using hotplug with serial port as I pointed out above and I think this should be sufficient.

[alexmurray]

Also the name minicom-snap is redundant - could you instead just publish to the name minicom instead?

[ruhan.vanderberg]

The reason for the redundancy, is not to use the only snap name available, should I not keep the snap updated for a while. Also, I registered the snap name a while ago, and it would be a shame if I were to nuke the minicom-snap snap name, where it has been installed on 900-odd machines.

[ruhan.vanderberg]

Thanks, I think that it would be useful.

You can hold-off on the classic-confinement request for now, as soon as I can get to it to make my changes to the snap.

Thanks for your time.