Support Installing a local deb package in the snapcraft

[XiaoGuo, Liu]

I am trying to get the Chinese input method working for some of the snap apps. Currently, sogou Chinese input method is very popular in China. However, due to license issue, it does not exist in the ubuntu archive. In order to install it, a developer has to download its .deb file from a website and manually install it. The debian file can be found at:

http://pinyin.sogou.com/linux/download.php?f=linux&bit=64

I think this may apply to some of the other software packages.

I think it would be better to support installing a local .deb file in the snapcraft so that a developer can easily package the .deb package into the final snap file.

Thanks & best regards,
XiaoGuo

[Leo Arias (elopio)]

I'm marking this as confirmed, with a note about the usability of this feature:

This is similar to the 96boards demo, that needs a file to be downloaded and placed in a location inside the snapcraft directory in order to build.
It's doable, but the experience is really bad.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

hi,
Am Mittwoch, den 20.07.2016, 05:24 +0000 schrieb XiaoGuo, Liu:

> I think it would be better to support installing a local .deb file in
> the snapcraft so that a developer can easily package the .deb package
> into the final snap file.
>
you can see how that is already possible in:
https://github.com/ogra1/laidout

where i use the make plugin to wget a remote .deb from upstream and
unpack it using "dpkg -x"...

ciao
 oli

[Sergio Schvezov (sergiusens)]

https://github.com/snapcore/snapcraft/pull/811