Snapcraft Guide (Ubuntu Software Center & More)

This guide provides information on how to package your Electron application for the Ubuntu Software Center or any other Snapcraft environment.

Background and Requirements

Together with the broader Linux community, Canonical aims to fix many of the common software installation problems with the snapcraft project. Snaps are containerized software packages that include required dependencies, auto-update, and work on all major Linux distributions without system modification.

Snapcraft is the primary way to get your application into the Ubuntu Software Center, but the underlying Snap Store supports all major Linux distributions, too.

There are three ways to create a .snap file:

Using electron-installer-snap, which takes electron-packager's output
Using an already created .deb package
Using electron-forge or electron-builder, both tools that come with snap support out of the box. This is the easiest option.

In all cases, you will need to have the snapcraft tool installed. We recommend building on Ubuntu 16.04 (or the current LTS).

snap install snapcraft --classic

While it is possible to install snapcraft on macOS using Homebrew, you are less likely to encounter issues when running snapcraft on an actual Linux distribution. As of today, it is not able ot build snap packages, for instance.

Using `electron-installer-snap`

The module works like electron-winstaller and similar modules in that its scope is limited to building snap packages. You can install it with:

npm install --save-dev electron-installer-snap

Step 1: Package Your Electron Application

Package the application using electron-packager (or a similar tool). Make sure to remove node_modules that you don't need in your final application, since any module you don't actually need will just increase your application's size.

The output should look roughly like this:

.
└── dist
    └── app-linux-x64
        ├── LICENSE
        ├── LICENSES.chromium.html
        ├── content_shell.pak
        ├── app
        ├── icudtl.dat
        ├── libgcrypt.so.11
        ├── libnode.so
        ├── locales
        ├── natives_blob.bin
        ├── resources
        ├── snapshot_blob.bin
        └── version

Step 2: Running `electron-installer-snap`

From a terminal that has snapcraft in its PATH, run electron-installer-snap with the only required parameter --src, which is the location of your packaged Electron application created in the first step.

npx electron-installer-snap --src=out/myappname-linux-x64

If you have an existing build pipeline, you can use electron-installer-snap programmatically. For more information, see the API docs.

const snap = require('electron-installer-snap')

snap(options)
  .then(snapPath => console.log(`Created snap at ${snapPath}!`))

Using an Existing Debian Package

Snapcraft is capable of taking an existing .deb file and turning it into a .snap file. The creation of a snap is configured using a snapcraft.yaml file that describes the sources, dependencies, description, and other core building blocks.

Step 1: Create a Debian Package

If you do not already have a .deb package, using electron-installer-snap might be an easier path to create snap packages. However, multiple solutions for creating Debian packages exist, including electron-forge, electron-builder or electron-installer-debian.

Step 2: Create a snapcraft.yaml

For more information on the available configuration options, see the documentation on the snapcraft syntax. Let's look at an example:

name: myApp
version: 2.0.0
summary: A little description for the app.
description: |
 You know what? This app is amazing! It does all the things
 for you. Some say it keeps you young, maybe even happy. 

grade: stable
confinement: classic

parts:
  slack:
    plugin: dump
    source: my-deb.deb
    source-type: deb
    after:
      - desktop-gtk2
    build-packages:
      - patchelf
    stage-packages:
      - libasound2
      - libgconf2-4
      - libnotify4
      - libnspr4
      - libnss3
      - libpcre3
      - libpulse0
      - libxss1
      - libxtst6
  electron-launch:
    plugin: dump
    source: files/
    prepare: |
      chmod +x bin/electron-launch      

apps:
  myApp:
    command: bin/electron-launch $SNAP/usr/lib/myApp/myApp
    desktop: usr/share/applications/myApp.desktop
    # Correct the TMPDIR path for Chromium Framework/Electron to ensure
    # libappindicator has readable resources.
    environment:
      TMPDIR: $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR

As you can see, the snapcraft.yaml instructs the system to launch a file called electron-launch. In this example, it simply passes information on to the app's binary:

#!/bin/sh

exec "$@" --executed-from="$(pwd)" --pid=$$ > /dev/null 2>&1 &

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