Requesting auto connect for network-observe / home for wickr

Hello,

We would like to request that the network-observe and home permissions are auto-connected for the wickrme and wickrpro snaps.

network-observe : Used to check if the user is currently connected to the internet, this is used for various UX scenarios where you need to be online to properly use the product, such as login for example. We also have a banner that pops up telling you that you can’t connect so you aren’t wondering why your messages aren’t sending.

home: Used to support drag & drop sending of files, as well as importing / exporting files to send to other users

Let me know if you need any more info from me

The home interface already auto-connects for classic installs (i.e. not Ubuntu Core 16/18). Is this a request for home auto-connect on Ubuntu Core as well as classic?

We are currently building the snap with ‘core18’ now, which is what triggered the request. Previously we had been on classic / ‘core’. It seemed like from the list of interfaces we were using, network-observe and home were the ones that needed to now be auto-connecting because that broke with the change to core18

I am interpreting this statement as you saying your users are using the snap on classic desktop OS’s like Ubuntu Server or Ubuntu Desktop and your base snap was the core snap by default (i.e. you didn’t specify a base in the snapcraft.yaml). Is that understanding correct?

Note that Ubuntu Core is not the same as the core snap, Ubuntu Core is a special version of Ubuntu Server which is stripped down and only supports installing applications as snaps and is meant for IoT/devices, etc.

Can you detail this more? A change of bases from core to core18 should not trigger interfaces to be disconnected, and if these interfaces previously auto-connected for you snap with the implicit “core” base snap now no longer connect when you refresh to a core18 snap, that is a bug.

Sorry, didn’t realize the conflicting terminology here. I meant we changed from base core to base core18. Our apps are meant to run on only on classic desktop OS’s.

The problem wasn’t specifically with the refresh, I believe users that were complaining were fresh installs of the core18 based snap. The first screen of the app where you go to type your credentials only highlights the submit button if you have a network connection, so because the network-monitor wasn’t auto-connected they had issues. The process of explaining to people they have to go turn this on is problematic from a UX perspective, which is why I’m asking to allow the auto-connections.

Hmm, well the home interface at least should still be auto-connected with a fresh install, so if you do see that behavior please report it as a bug at bugs.launchpad.net/snapd.

As for this request, I’m not a reviewer, but your use-case here seems sensible to auto-connect network-observe.

+1 for network-observe, -1 for home (it is already auto-connected on classic distro).

@reviewers - can others vote on this?

@reviewers - can others please vote on this?

Bump for visibility, I’ll take network-observe, that’s the one I really need the most to remove confusion

+1 from me for auto-connecting network-observe for the wickr snap.

+1 on network-observe, sounds like it allows the software to give much better feedback to the user.
I’m +1 on home too since a valid use case for wickr is sending files presumably kept in home. It doesn’t want access to hidden directories which is good.

A question though, if it’s classic, does it even need network-observe? (Ian already mentioned home should be unnecessary).

  • Daniel

3 votes for, 0 against for auto-connecting network-observe. This is now live for both wickrme and mickrpro.

To clarify, the snap is using strict confinement, not classic