Working snapcraft image

[koppor]

This tracks the current state of the snapcraft image. This main text is updated to reflect the current state.

Howto install and update

Beta version:

sudo snap install jabref --beta

Latest snapshot:

• sudo snap install jabref --edge --devmode
• sudo snap refresh jabref --edge --devmode

Current state

• Registered at https://build.snapcraft.io/user/koppor
• Travis is used for building as currently only CircleCI 2.0 is supported for building and we use CircleCI 1.0 for building. A switch to CircleCI 2.0 is tested at branch circleci20, but does currently not work and it does not seem to be easy to get it running
• build on Travis takes approx. 10 min
• build will take place at snapcraft-ci branch only to avoid much too much development versions at Ubuntu.
• Dashboard https://dashboard.snapcraft.io/dev/snaps/7999/

Open points

• Snapcraft image does not allow opening linked files - Snapcraft image does not allow opening linked files #3159
• Snapcraft image does not provide icon - Snapcraft image does not provide icon #3160
• publish stable version to Ubuntu's snap repository (https://uappexplorer.com/snaps) (currently no version visible) - has to be done manually
• Use https://build.snapcraft.io/ instead of travis
  • gradle binary cannot be downloaded from http://build.snapcraft.io. See: Allow downloading gradle binary canonical-web-and-design/build.snapcraft.io#918 -> we have to wait until the fix ant plugin, gradle plugin: add support for authenticated proxies canonical/snapcraft#1490 is released in snapcraft 2.34
  • Adapt build.gradle to include the version update in snapcraft.yml, currently done by https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/blob/a06fa19ecf5235c0cd9d44e8dbdcd402ec7bf0ae/scripts/run-snapcraft.sh
• Minor: Follow up https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapcraft/+bug/1718105
• Add documentation: http://discourse.jabref.org/t/connecting-with-libreoffice-snap-under-ubuntu-16-04/980/7?u=koppor
• Approval - see Get snapcraft build approved #5417 (comment)

Howto build locally

1. docker run -it -v /d/git-repositories/jabref/jabref:/tmp/snap koppor/snapcraft-java-de bash
2. cd /tmp/jabref
3. snapcraft
4. Read along at https://snapcraft.io/docs/build-snaps/publish

References

• http://snapcraft.io/docs/build-snaps/metadata
• https://snapcraft.io/docs/build-snaps/publish
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/snapcraft/parts
• App store of Ubuntu: https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/desktop/ and https://shop.canonical.com/index.php?cPath=19
• https://gist.github.com/evandandrea/c754964bfdfb176844f26f605ebbb8db
• The gradle support is very new (see Add a gradle demo and test canonical/snapcraft#912)

[ilippert]

If I may ask, will this snapshot be updated to the 4.0 version?

[koppor]

We currently have no money to pay someone for that (donations page). No one of the JabRef team gets paid for JabRef. Thus, working on this really depends on the availability of our personal free time. It seems that I do not have time for that this year.

We really welcome feedback on our volunteer work. In case you can spend some more time we would really like to encourage you to check https://help.jabref.org/en/FAQcontributing - especially the part asking for improvement of our help pages. This would help JabRef getting better as a whole. 🥇