Strategy for Building J-Pilot Snap

snapcraft
1

I’m working on helping a software project (J-Pilot, software to syncronize/backup old Palm PDA devices) build a snap to provide their software to a larger audience via the Snap store and provide compatibility with other distros using snaps. The software is currently available in .deb format from this page (these packages are not in the Ubuntu repos). The source code is also available in a github directory that is used for development. Since I’m new to building snaps, I was hoping that some more experienced users might be able to provide some advice.

Is it possible to import .debs that are not in the Ubuntu repos to build a snap?

If so, would that be a good path forward or would it be better to use .tar.gz source files?

I appreciate any advice that you all could give!

2

it is often more helpful to build from source since the debs might be linked against specific library versions and you might want/need to patch one or the other path in the source …

looking at:

you should be able to use snapcrafts autotools plugin to build it easily …

3

Thank you so much! I will give that a try.