Help with desktop file not being primed

snapcraft
1

Hello. I have a snapcraft.yaml file along with a sibling ‘gui’ folder here:

https://github.com/bluescan/tacentview/tree/master/Linux/snapcraft/snap

It used to automatically install the .desktop file (and png) but for some reason the prime/meta dir is empty now except for the snap.yaml. The docs indicate

“When you run snapcraft , the entire contents of snap/gui will be copied into the meta/gui/ folder of the resulting snap.”

If I manually copy the files to prime/meta/gui (in the VM shell), and then run snapcraft, it appears to remove the .desktop file. I tried installing the resulting snap (in Ubuntu) just to be sure… but no .desktop file in /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/

The odd thing is this used to work. I’ve probably bunged something up, but no idea what. Using snapcraft 4.4.1 stable with core20.

Thanks for any help.

2

Not sure I understand the issue. I just cloned your repo, built using snapcraft --use-lxd and installed and ran the snap. It has a valid desktop file, and can launch from the command line and from the desktop.

3

Well, thank you popey for doing that! Huh. I am using multipass… maybe I’ll try lxd instead. So strange.

4

It must be something local wrong with my build machine. Tried with lxd. No diff. It snaps fine, but the generated snap does not launch from desktop etc. Installing previous version/snap of the app works fine. In any case, thanks again for testing… knowing where to look really helps (will prob start by re-cloning). Cheers.

5

I’m still stuck on this TBH. I tried a clean clone, tried a ‘snapcraft clean’, tried the edge version of snapcraft (4.4.2) as well as stable, tried more liberal file permissions on the gui folder and contents. All to no effect.

I assume the gui dir should end up in prime/meta (but it doesn’t)
If I manually copy the gui dir from ‘parts’ into prime/meta (in the VM shell) and then type snapcraft, the spinner spins and afterwards the .desktop file is gone (although the .png is still there). I assume that’s not expected behaviour?

6

My current kinda hacky workaround is to a) mount the resulting snap using sudo mount -t squashfs -o ro … b) dupe it, unmount, move the original snap away c) copy the gui folder in there (with the missing desktop file) d) Resquash it with something like:

mksquashfs mnt2/ tacentview_1.0.16_amd64.snap -noappend -comp xz -all-root -no-xattrs -no-fragments

Most of the above, including the dupe (cp -r), needs to be done with sudo.

It’s not elegant, but works :wink:

7

Are you by chance building it from inside the snap directory, instead of above it? If you’re inside the snap directory snapcraft won’t see snap/gui, just gui which will be ignored.

An unfortunate side-effect of allowing snapcraft.yaml to reside in <project> directory or <project>/snap.

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8

That’s exactly what I was doing!
Can’t believe I didn’t catch that… it’s just that so much worked just fine. Thank you cjp256.

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9

well, i guess snapcraft knows where it is running so perhaps spitting out a warning about this issue would be a good thing ?

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10

A warning would certainly have saved me some embarrassment :wink:

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11

Yes, it would :smiley:

Well it won’t help you now, but maybe the next one!

PR to add a warning: https://github.com/snapcore/snapcraft/pull/3379

E.g.: Snapcraft is running in directory 'snap'. If this is the snap assets directory, please run snapcraft from /home/chris/tmp/tacentview/Linux/snapcraft.

Feel free to suggest an improvement :smiley:

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