89 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
89 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
Snaps on Gentoo
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## Update 07/09/2019
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Snapd is now in a overlay on it's on for your convenience. See
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[here](snapd-repository-for-gentoo.html)
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## Update
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The instructions to get snaps working on gentoo here are outdated. See my
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current post [Snaps on Gentoo - The saga continues](snaps-on-gentoo---the-saga-continues.html)
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## Why?
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Many will think it is heresy to put binary packages on a Gentoo system
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let alone a package system which encourages binary packages to come with
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their own set of shared libraries.
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While I tend to agree, the practicality of sticking to this arrangement
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can be difficult for a couple of cases. Here are a few I can think of:
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* Source not available
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* No binary package or source ebuild for Gentoo
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* ebuild takes too long to compile
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In the case of ebuilds taking too long (eg. chromium), I have a limited
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budget and can't really afford to leave my power hungry desktop on 24/7
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to keep chromium builds up-to-date.
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Here are a quick list of software that I use which fall into one of these
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categories:
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* Citrix Reciever
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* Powershell (Available as source, but no ebuild and I haven't had the
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time to try write one myself)
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* Minecraft (Gaming with the kids)
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* Discord (Chatting with games)
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* Chromium (Primarily a firefox user, but have some trouble with getting it
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to see and work with Citrix)
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With my excuses for putting snap's on Gentoo out of the way, here is how
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I've got it working for my systems.
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## Overlay
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There are a few overlay's for Gentoo out there. Even an official one
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maintained (or as the case may be, unmaintained) by
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[zyga](https://github.com/zyga) from Canonical. I tried that one, and many
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of the forks with no such luck.
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After googling around I stumbled on a thread on
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[snapcraft.io](https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/gentoo-update-needed/3029/15)
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and a post from user jamesb192 about the progress on their snapd overlay.
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[JamesB192 overlay](https://github.com/JamesB192/JamesB192-overlay) works,
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but it doesn't have an overlay.xml file for adding with layman.
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To overcome this, I've hosted one on my site
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[here](http://jesseharrisit.com/overlay.xml). You can add this to your
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system using overlay like this:
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echo app-portage/layman git >> /etc/portage/package.use/layman
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emerge app-portage/layman
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layman -o http://jesseharrisit.com/overlay.xml -f -a gentoo-zigford
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Now that you have the overlay installed should be able to emerge snapd
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like so:
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emerge app-emulation/snapd
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*Note - You may need to adjust your kernel config and the ebuild is
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pretty good at highlighting which options need to be set.*
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## Issues
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During my testing of snaps on Gentoo, I've come across a couple of issues
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that either have been solved or could be solved in the ebuild
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1. snap packages only install and run as root (This was solved by setting
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suid on /usr/lib64/snapd/snap-confine, and solved in ebuild 2.34)
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2. /var/lib/snapd not created (manually mkdir the directory)
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## Final thoughts.
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Snap packages feel like a great augmentation for Gentoo. It allows me to
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keep using Gentoo as a daily driver and augment some of it's missing
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packages with packages from more popular distros.
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Tags: gentoo, snapd, overlay
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