This has somewhat been discussed in other locations [1] but I’ll open a forum topic about it.
We have an issue where there is no suitable short human-readable title field for a snap. This field is present in the store, but is not passed through snapd to a client (e.g. GNOME Software). This means we only ever use the snap name which is limited in format, not translated and technical.
For example I have a snap of GHex in the store.
The package name is: ghex-udt
The package title as set in the store is: GHex
In GNOME Software this snap shows as ghex-udt, instead of GHex.
There’s a number of components that need to be fixed to make this work:
- Get snapd to pass this title value from the store to a client, so searches show this name. (snapd)
- Use this field in clients instead of the snap name. (gnome-software)
- Include the title field in the snap manifest so installed snaps are shown with this name. This field needs to be optional since existing snaps don’t have it and “techy” apps (e.g. command-line) probably don’t need to set a name like this. snapd needs to pass this field through to clients. (snap spec / documentation)
- Have Snapcraft provide a means of setting the title value in the snapcraft.yaml and put into the generated .snap. (snapcraft)
- Make the store should automatically pull out the title on snap upload, so you don’t have to manually enter it (as you do currently). (store)