How to snap packages that provide "extra" files to be used by something else

[Leo Arias]

Hello Christian!

On 2016-08-04 07:16, Christian Ehrhardt wrote:
> Hi,
> while thinking about what I could experiment with snapping next I
> checked what I still use some external repositories for - as I
> considered those a great list of opportunities.
> 
> One that I found there was my printer driver which consists of these
> packages [1] provided by [2].
> But thinking about how that would fit into the snap world gave me a hard
> time, so I thought I better write it up for discussion. I mean I can
> only win, either by learning or by identifying something that we can
> convert into a valid feature request.
> 
> The reason I thought this might be non-standard in regard to snaps is,
> that most of the functionality provided by these packages is achieved by
> placing files for other programs to pick it up. Some examples might be:
> - cups ppd files - /usr/share/cups/model/suld/ML-1740.ppd.gz
> - special cups filters - /usr/lib/cups/filter/pstosplc
> - or even libs for sane - /usr/lib/sane/libsane-smfp.so
> 
> Now that doesn't fit in the (otherwise really great) sandboxing into
> ~/snap or /snap.
> Because in this case others programs should be able to pick up these
> files in common paths.
> 
> It doesn't really qualify for an interface [3] as I thought to
> understand them so far.
> 
> It might be somewhat close to the "home" plug in some ways - so maybe
> there lies the rescue.
> Yet the home plug it is more about the snap being able to reach out and
> not "others" being able to pick up the files of the snap.
> 
> So what would be the preferred way to solve such issues in general when
> creating a snap?
> 
> Thinking about it a bit further, even man-pages could be considered to
> fall in a very similar category right?
> 
> Looking forward to learn, kind regards,
> Christian
> 
> [1]: http://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/repository.html
> [2]: http://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/index.html
> [3]: http://snapcraft.io/docs/reference/interfaces

There have been some discussions in past weeks about cups and printers,
started by Till (cc'ed here).

He can probably tell you more about the plans, the work in progress and
the things that are still left to define.

pura vida.

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