Snapcraft fails if desktop file included "ascii" cannot decode byte

snapcraft
1

Hi all,

As requested I’m re-posting each of the What snap needs to improve Electron support topics individually so they can each be better discussed.

The intention of this post is to highlight an outstanding issue, and hopefully get it priortised, that would help improve snap support for developers building on Electron.

snapcraft fails if desktop file included “ascii” cannot decode byte

Many Electron applications have translated strings in their .desktop files for the Name, GenericName or CommentName fields. Some of the translatated strings include UTF-8 characters and this causes snapcraft to fail.

The bug is launchpad is marked Fix Released but I’m still encountering the issue using snapcraft from the snap candidate channel.

2

As commented on the bug: Are you using cleanbuild? Unfortunately, until 2.30 doesn’t reach the release pocket in the archives this won’t work as expected.

3

Yes, I’m using cleanbuild. I’ll refresh from edge and test again.

4

Note that snapcraft cleanbuild uses the snapcraft from the Xenial image in LXD. Until that changes even using the latest snap isn’t enough to get the latest bug fixes in that case.