Feature request #17710

Provide a snap package for Linux users

Added by Kristijan Zic over 6 years ago. Updated about 6 years ago.

Status:Open
Priority:High
Assignee:-
Category:Build/Install
Pull Request or Patch supplied:No Resolution:
Easy fix?:Yes Copied to github as #:25607

Description

Please consider packaging QGIS as a snap package as it is a universal package and basically a new standard that works on any Linux distribution and it can bundle all dependencies regardless of the ones that come with the distro so you can push the new package to the users that have for ex. older versions of Qt with their distro without it conflicting with the QGIS one.

So there should be one package that works on any distro without any conflicts or distro specific hackery.

Here is the website of the tool for building snap packages.
Snapcraft - a tool for creating snaps.
https://snapcraft.io/

History

#1 Updated by Patrick Dunford over 6 years ago

There is already been some work on an AppImage package
I prefer the AppImage which can be installed in multiple versions for Linux, currently this is not possible without building from source.

#2 Updated by Kristijan Zic over 6 years ago

Snaps can be installed in multiple versions for Linux too.
The issue with AppImages afaik is that they are not confined and thus not secure, probably for that reason they don't have a store and cannot be published on any distro's appstore. Snaps on the other hand can.
With snaps you can also have multiple tracks/channels of the app in the store like stable, development, beta, edge etc. and users can pick from which channel to install and if not it will install stable by default. That could really help with testing qgis since users could easily switch between channels if they want, and without them conflicting with each other or the OS version of libs.
Snaps can be distributed like downloadable packages on the website or using a store like Gnome Software or a cli store. No need to first make a package executable in order to run it like you have to do with AppImages etc.

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