element-hq
Create a snap for ubuntu
Related to https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/3718 and https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/4766
Hey hey! I understand riot is an electron app, right? We have a blog post which details how easy it is to get a snap built. I'd love to help with this.
They closed the pull request March 31 citing not wanting to create another distribution. People need to make noise in issue in order for them to reconsider. Here's some noise
Just adding a note here to say that @popey has gone ahead and created an unofficial snap
https://twitter.com/popey/status/1133884378143166464 https://snapcraft.io/riot-web
I tried the snap from the snapstore on Ubuntu 20.04. It launches only on first install. After closing the app it doesn't open again. The signal-desktop snap had the same problem, but now that seems fixed.
I brought up the question of the possibility of an official Snapcraft build of Element Desktop in the Matrix chatroom, before I knew of this issue. There were many useful discussion points made that can be followed from this message:
https://matrix.to/#/!YTvKGNlinIzlkMTVRl:matrix.org/$1EL-t25jkkFRY_nmF3tTioeC5YWV16YD68lrizebDfo
I tried the snap from the snapstore on Ubuntu 20.04. It launches only on first install. After closing the app it doesn't open again. The signal-desktop snap had the same problem, but now that seems fixed.
I am using the snap build on Xubuntu 18.04.4 LTS and is working fine. Obviously I can't say about 20.04 but as it's also an LTS I can't imagine why it would stop working.
@popey the instructions from https://snapcraft.io/blog/bringing-electron-applications-to-linux produce snap with Element that freezes on run with this error.
FATAL:platform_shared_memory_region_posix.cc(255)] This is frequently caused by incorrect permissions on
/dev/shm. Try 'sudo chmod 1777 /dev/shm' to fix.
I filled the issue with electron-builder https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder/issues/5574 Not sure what else can I do.
What do you think of taking an approach similar to the signal-desktop snap? They aren't actually building the electron app in the snap manifest, instead they're pulling down the latest .deb files and then repackaging that.
@nduja the electon-builder is the officially recommended way for building snaps https://snapcraft.io/docs/electron-apps so I only followed it. I will take look, thanks.
I've been using the, I guess unofficial Riot snap for a while, but it seems to be getting out-of-date. Noticeably it hasn't changed its name to Element. Though I think it is missing some video features as well.
@popey is there a PR for your snapcraft configuration that could be built on? (I didn't see one in the list) Could there be? :smile:
@ted-gould yeah, sorry the riot-web snap got behind. It actually was built from source, not a repack of the deb like signal. Unfortunately I got somewhat frustrated and burned out by the changes which made riot-web frequently fail to build, then the name change was the final straw. I just gave up in annoyance. I haven't even looked at riot/element since the name change. If people are having trouble building using electron builder, I'd recommend bringing it up on the snapcraft forum. https://forum.snapcraft.io/
@popey already reported here https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/electron-builder-produces-freezing-snaps/22328 with no resolution so far.
There are now a few of these:
- https://snapcraft.io/element-desktop by @kenvandine (source: kenvandine/element-desktop, stable: 1.10.14, edge: 1.11.1)
- https://snapcraft.io/element-client by @ArnaudLier (1.10.12, hidden because it had issues)
- https://snapcraft.io/riot-web by @popey (1.6.0, seems also hidden)
FWIW upstream element-desktop is on 1.11.3 now; 1.11.1 is 25 days old, 1.10.14 and 1.10.12 are both from this May, 1.6.0 is from May 2020.
So https://snapcraft.io/element-desktop seems to be the way to go. (Just tried, seems to work fine.)
Some guidance about these on https://element.io/get-started#linux-details would be nice - snap apps are far superior UX for the average user comapres to messing around with apt signing keys and whatnot. If using https://snapcraft.io/element-desktop is inadvisable for some reason, the official page should probably warn about that. Otherwise it should link to it as the primary means of installation, or at least mention it.
1.11.1 of the element-desktop snap is now in stable and 1.11.3 is building to edge right now.
Could the snapcraft folder be added to the official repo, and the snap be taken over by element staff? Or maybe be moved to the snapcrafters repo? Most users would probably prefer that a highly sensitive app like element would come from a more official source. Nothing against @kenvandine ;)
@kristbaum unlikely on the front of it being maintained by the Element Web team, we don't have sufficient bandwidth or area knowledge to take this on at this time.
I have updated the description of riot-web to indicate it's no longer maintained and that users should instead use element-desktop.
Hi team! There's an unofficial snap pkg available in the snap store: https://github.com/kenvandine/element-desktop. Might we merge its snap implementation here? Maybe myself or @kenvandine could help with the support but we'll have the benefit that the app will be official.
I'm happy to keep supporting it, but it would be great to see it published officially.
On Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 1:35 PM santiago fn @.***> wrote:
Hi team! There's an unofficial snap pkg available in the snap store: https://github.com/kenvandine/element-desktop. Might we merge its snap implementation here? Maybe myself or @kenvandine https://github.com/kenvandine could help with the support but we'll have the benefit that the app will be official.
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I don't think we should take in a package that we can't self maintain push come to shove, so unless someone from the web team with snap packaging experience is willing to step up and take the reigns this is better remaining as it is