What happened to signal-desktop?

snap
1

I found that signal-desktop is no more listed on snapcraft.io:

neither can I install it by running snap install signal-desktop.

What happened to signal-desktop snap? It got redacted?

1 Like
2

well, the source seems to still be maintained (last updated ~4 weeks ago):

perhaps someone from the @Snapcrafters team has an idea why it is hidden now ?

3

Hmm, I tested another machine, which I installed signal-desktop a while ago.

Now snap list shows its publisher as snap-quarantine:

$ snap list | grep signal-desktop
signal-desktop 5.59.0 397  snap-quarantine

This seems not good. Maybe it suggests that the package has been somehow corrupted?

4

Hello everyone,

I understand the sudden move of signal-desktop can be disruptive for people wishing to install this package. Just to confirm the reason for the absence - Snap Store administrators had to remove the snap in accordance with our policies. We hope to have it back shortly.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

  • Daniel
1 Like
5

Thank you for providing an official answer.

Considering the extraordinary amount of trust given to the application itself and implicitly to those who package and distribute it, could you please give an indication of the impact on existing users on a scale from “Code indentation not compliant with style guide” to “All your keystrokes and messages are being sent to $evilorg”.

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6

Certainly, and this is a great question. There is NO impact to existing users. If you have the application/snap installed, you can continue to use it confidently.

  • Daniel
2 Likes
7

I LMAO’ed on this one.

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8

I was just linked to this thread from our issue tracker

As a maintainer for this snap package, it’s mind-boggling to me that, even after almost two weeks, the store team did not contact me at all. I had to find this out myself from users reporting it on our bug tracker.

After almost two weeks, the maintainer of the snap has not received any official communication about this, but @roadmr was able to provide this tiny sliver of info in a thread on this forum. This is an incredible breakdown in communication and is not how maintainers should be treated!

6 Likes
9

That’s hardly a “reason for the absence”. Just saying that it was removed is no explanation nor a reason. That’s just answering the question “Why?” with “Because”. So what’s the reason the app got removed?

10

As an interested user who appreciates the work done by both snap maintainers and snapcrafters, it would be really good to see this situation resolved in such a way that we can be reasonably confident that appropriate communication between all three parties about status is handled systematically and openly.

Naturally none of us expect perfection or immediate resolution of all related issues, but this case illustrates some opportunities for improvement. In my case, my ignorance of where to go from snap-quarantine is an issue for me (though my initial RTFM and STFW efforts have turned up little so far).

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11

My biggest two issues here are:

  1. No communication to those maintaining the snap
  2. Messaging that we’ve elicited has been “removed due to policy” without any explanation of which policy or where to find the list of these policies that we can read to understand under what circumstances such removals may occur.
    • I get that there may be scenarios where the details cannot be divulged but the policy that is being used to trigger a removal/quarantine must be communicated, rather than citing the nebulous “but muh policy” response. When a lack of detail is required there must also be a defined timeline to provide updates so that we can be sure that situations won’t run on forever.
2 Likes
12

Hi Merlijn,

Please accept my apologies on the miscommunication here. Our process does state to contact the snap’s publisher - since the snap is ostensibly owned by snapcrafters and the most recent uploads were all done by a generic snapcrafters account, I was under the (mistaken) impression I’d covered this by mentioning to a contact within snapcrafters.

I should have checked the list of active collaborators, of which you are one, and also given them (you!) a heads-up about this process.

I’m updating our process documentation to be very explicit about this for future cases.

Regards,

  • Daniel
4 Likes
13

Would anyone please indicate

  1. Why
  2. What is the ETA for its return

Please do not make snap store like that of Play or App store? Things are unknown unknows… Thanks for the support.

1 Like
14

If you were to switch back to the Signal deb package, you would

  1. setup the Signal Desktop official APT repository per instructions,
  2. install the deb package for Signal, sudo apt install signal-desktop.
  3. move the Signal folder from ~/snap/signal-desktop/... to ~/.config/.
  4. launch signal-desktop.

That’s it.

At a later date, you can switch back to the Signal snap package by moving the Signal folder to the appropriate ~/snap/signal-desktop/... location.

15

Snap maintainer here.

This is due to a DMCA takedown request coming from people representing Signal. Canonical is currently working with Signal to resolve this issue.

There was an initial communication breakdown between me and Canonical due to how the Snapcrafters publisher is structured. Canonical is changing their procedures to make sure this communication breakdown doesn’t happen in the future anymore.

I’ve suggested to Canonical to be more transparent with DMCA takedown requests, similar to how GitHub does it. Last I heard, they were discussing this internally.

10 Likes
17

I can’t believe we are still there in 2022. No normal user can do this and is stuck.

Better install gnome-software with flatpak plugin and let the user click …

Whoo I can feel the touchy behaviour here , no problem , will contribute elsewhere.

18

edit: oh, @ekimia sorry I partly misunderstood you post on first reading; so here a better response

The debian suggestion is one way to install Signal and I agree I personally would rather go the flatpak as way.

But coming from a vanilla ubuntu (or other OS which does not set up flatpak from the start) installing and configuring Signal and other necessary packages etc to run via flatpak is more complicated. I think going the apt way is actually more helpful to most people, because they can be assumed to know how apt works.

And your answer could have been better by actually giving the commands to install flatpak and gnome-software and making sure the configuration fits (or linking an article to do that). I just got “bitten” on my debian system that flatpak auto-updates only work with gnome-software. And does gnome-software work for KDE (or other desktop environments)? And where to put the folders? And also the Signal flatpak is not an official one, so some users might prefer to get the official packages NB: i mostly run snaps/flatpaks only without X access so those can not spy effortless on one another; but that was a moving target in the recent past - not sure if the snap worked without X or not; but for both flatpak and snap systems it needs different configuration to prevent the access (i.e. extra need for configuration as opposed to apt).

So I agree one could construct that simos does push apt rather than flatpak. But actually the apt way is the one which is better for most people out of the box. One could also construct that simos does know how to solve this in apt but not necessarily for all cases in flatpak. I think the thread only needs a good flatpak suggestion. So if you want to contribute to Signal/flatpak…

19

The signal-desktop package is again available as a snap package.

Note that at the moment there is a pending bug report. It includes a workaround.

2 Likes
20
  • 2024 : Ubuntu is now almost the only distro to not propose flatpak out of the Box
  • As long as the instructions involve copying commands to the terminal , installing deb or flatpak is either complicated I would say
21

@ekimia what is your point? flatpak and snap (and appimage+boxing) do mostly overlap in purpose on the desktop; so i doubt there are (m)any distros enabling both from the get-go. Both got a lot better and both usually do suck in quality compared to having curated up-to-date debs/rpms… And certainly that canonical uses snap in ubuntu is best practice (it is called eat-your-own-dog-food). And is your new post especially relevant for the signal-desktop snap? The flatpak version destroyed the signal history in a recent update because of troubles with how electron apps suck in flatpak. Hope the snap does not get the same problem. Better keep your primary android around.

1 Like