Classic snaps not showing in Ubuntu Software

As someone who deals with the desktop on a daily basis, and supports users making use of the desktop - I think it is time to begin thinking about the installation of Snaps and how to handle the interfaces that the Snaps use and present them in a sane and understandable way to the user.

For instance, on Android when you install an app - it tells you what the app wants access to. You can accept or decline (or these days get granular with permissions). I think it is important to give Snap users a similar accept/decline option with information on what the Snap wants permissions to.

In that vein, I think that we should ensure all Snaps that are in the stable branch show up in the software center on Ubuntu (at least). Even classicly confined snaps. So long as a prompt tells the user that those Snaps will have free reign on their system, I think this is acceptable.

What do you guys think? I know this isn’t an Ubuntu-specific forum, but I believe this is the best place to have this conversation.

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This is the case today (I’m using Ubuntu 16.04). Do you not see them there? Classic snaps show up there as well, although they’re not currently installable (a known issue).

I’ve heard this before, perhaps it is because I’m in Ubuntu GNOME. I do not see the classic snaps. Perhaps it is specific to the version of GNOME software that ships with Ubuntu GNOME.

Yeah I don’t know much about that. Do you see non-classic snaps there?

The prompt thing is something I think overhearing @willcooke mentioning as something they want to look into. Maybe @robert.ancell can chime in as he’s been working on the integration bits of Gnome Software and snapd

Personally I think it would be grand and most likely just needs some design and dev work (read: manpower).

That sounds like a bug in Ubuntu Software. Classic snaps should show there as usual, just like they show on the console.

The topic of how to notify GNOME Software users of a snap using non-strict confinement was recently brought up in the following forum thread:

Behaviour for installing classic, devmode and unsigned snaps in a GUI

The Ubuntu bug tracking the ability to install classic confined snaps can be found here:

https://launchpad.net/bugs/1690280

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There’s no code to filter out snaps, so if classic snaps aren’t showing the only thing I can think of is perhaps no snaps are showing?

Actually, it looks like classic snaps might be showing. One point of interest is that the .desktop files for the applications aren’t being recognized or something. The apps don’t show up in the GNOME launcher (on Ubuntu GNOME 17.04).

Are they showing or not? :slight_smile: It’d be good to clarify so we can dig into the bug or be relieved that this isn’t an issue.

Hi Ryan. Can you be more specific? What exactly did you do, what version of snapd do you have installed and what did you try that didn’t work as expected.

I just booted a 17.04 Ubuntu GNOME system and fully updated and rebooted it. I then installed a non-classic snap from the GNOME software and it shows up fine in the menu.

Here’s the tail end (after I typed in my password) in GNOME Software, installing something and launching it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP5TwMIv8qQ

Okay, here we go. Sorry, it looks as though snaps are showing up properly in GNOME Software. I just thought there was some kind of indication that they were snaps (in “source” at the bottom).

Snap Info:
ryan@Seraph:~$ snap --version snap 2.25+17.04 snapd 2.25+17.04 series 16 ubuntu 17.04 kernel 4.10.0-21-generic

GNOME Version:
GNOME Shell 3.24.1

I guess if no one else is seeing this, that’s a good thing. I can’t think of any changes that specifically would make my machine different (but who knows).

PROBLEM FOUND!

This appears to be a Wayland-specific problem:

So says @sergiusens:

there is no env var setting for wayland, either global (so it affects everything) or as snaps do it, in /etc/Xorg…

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Here is the fix to the problem above: https://github.com/snapcore/snapd/pull/3398