The dialog Snapcraft part: Support presenting TUI dialogs to the users

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This Snapcraft part definition ships the dialog package to the snap, allowing packagers to present TUI dialogs to the users.

This is normally used in CLI snaps to present a message or require user input in a relatively friendly user interface:

Example dialog used in the nano-strict snap
Example dialog used in the nano-strict snap1261×654 133 KB

Also, see Inform users with custom dialogs.

Prerequisites

This section documents the prerequisites for using this Snapcraft part:

Usage

This section documents the instructions on how to make use of this Snapcraft part:

  1. Merge the following part definition into the parts stanza of your snapcraft.yaml file:

    parts:
  # This snapcraft part allows the creation of TUI dialogs
  # https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/the-dialog-snapcraft-part-support-presenting-tui-dialogs-to-the-users/40145
  dialog:
    plugin: nil
    stage-packages:
      - dialog
    prime:
      # C header files
      - -usr/include
      # Static libraries(no dynamic libraries shipped in this
      # part
      - -usr/lib
      # Documentation(aside from the copyright declarations)
      - -usr/share/doc/dialog/README*
      - -usr/share/doc/dialog/changelog.*
      - -usr/share/doc/dialog/examples
      # Manual pages
      - -usr/share/man
      # Perl binding for Dialog
      - -usr/share/perl5

  2. In your launcher or other program, invoke the dialog utility as in the following example:

    dialog \
    --title 'Hello dialog(1) world' \
    --msgbox 'This is an example of the msgbox style dialog(1) dialog box' \
    0 0

    Refer to Ubuntu Manpage: dialog - display dialog boxes from shell scripts for more info on how to invoke the dialog utility.

Reference

Ubuntu Manpage: dialog - display dialog boxes from shell scripts

2

@admins, please set this topic as a wiki, thanks!

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