snapcraft fails if desktop file included "ascii" cannot decode byte

[Light on Flux]

When including the project .desktop file building the snap fails:

'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 51: ordinal not in range(128)

Generated desktop file is attached. As well as the snapcraft file.

[Light on Flux (lightonflux)]

This problem only appears when building on 16.04 but not on 16.10.

[Light on Flux (lightonflux)]

And it does not appear when you manually compile the program on 16.04.

[Martin Wimpress  (flexiondotorg)]

I confirm this issue.

The 'apps' portion of my my snapcraft.yaml looks something like this.

    apps:
      something-test:
        command: desktop-launch $SNAP/usr/lib/something/something
        desktop: usr/share/applications/tld.something.app.desktop
        plugs: [browser-support, gsettings, home, mount-observe, network, opengl, pulseaudio, unity7, x11]

The referenced .desktop file includes UFT-8 translated Comment fields for:

    Comment[ar]=
    Comment[bg]=
    Comment[ja]=
    Comment[ru]=
    Comment[sr]=
    Comment[zh]=

[Leo Arias (elopio)]

Thanks for the report!

[Martin Wimpress  (flexiondotorg)]

Some additional testing:

  * Running `snapcraft cleanbuild` on 16.10 results in the same 'ascii' codec can't decode byte error.
  * Running `snapcraft` on 16.10 completed successfully.

[Leo Arias (elopio)]

I worked this around by setting the env var LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 and running locale-gen en_US.UTF-8. We can do this in our lxd container during cleanbuild for sure.

For cases out of cleanbuild, like running snapcraft in docker, a failure might be more appropriate, because we probably shouldn't play with people's env.

[Light on Flux (lightonflux)]

Am 26.03.2017 um 01:16 schrieb Leo Arias:
> I worked this around by setting the env var LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 and
> running locale-gen en_US.UTF-8. We can do this in our lxd container
> during cleanbuild for sure.
>
> For cases out of cleanbuild, like running snapcraft in docker, a failure
> might be more appropriate, because we probably shouldn't play with
> people's env.
>

Did it work with LANG=C?

In LXD upstream the issue was fixed. New (2.9 and later) versions should
automatically set LANG=C when using "lxc exec":

https://github.com/lxc/lxd/issues/2830

[Leo Arias (elopio)]

Hello affected people!

Here's a simple fix for cleanbuild: https://github.com/snapcore/snapcraft/pull/1304

Can you please tell me if this happened to you on a normal build without containers too? And if so, how did you end up with a system that only supports ascii?

[Leo Arias (elopio)]

Here's another small change, to make sure that the desktop file we read and write is encoded as utf8:
https://github.com/snapcore/snapcraft/pull/1309

[Martin Wimpress  (flexiondotorg)]

Didn't work for me sadly.

$ snap info snapcraft

name: snapcraft
summary: "easily create snaps"
publisher: canonical
contact: <email address hidden>
description: |
  Snapcraft aims to make upstream developers' lives easier and as such is not a
  single toolset, but instead is a collection of tools that enable the natural
  workflow of an upstream to be extended with a simple release step into Snappy
  enabled system.
commands:
  - snapcraft
tracking: stable/new-cli
installed: 2.29.1+git51.3e5e2d8 (154) 53MB classic
refreshed: 2017-05-16 20:30:30 +0100 BST
channels:
  latest/beta: 2.29.1 (99) 53MB classic
  latest/edge: 2.29.1+git38.6387808 (168) 53MB classic

Here is the Traceback:

'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 463: ordinal not in range(128)
Stopping local:snapcraft-nonnoumenally-insentient-despina
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/snap/snapcraft/154/bin/snapcraft", line 32, in <module>
    obj=dict(project=snapcraft.ProjectOptions()))
  File "/snap/snapcraft/154/lib/python3.6/site-packages/click/core.py", line 722, in __call__
    return self.main(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/snap/snapcraft/154/lib/python3.6/site-packages/click/core.py", line 697, in main
    rv = self.invoke(ctx)
  File "/snap/snapcraft/154/lib/python3.6/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1066, in invoke
    return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx))
  File "/snap/snapcraft/154/lib/python3.6/site-packages/click/core.py", line 895, in invoke
    return ctx.invoke(self.callback, **ctx.params)
  File "/snap/snapcraft/154/lib/python3.6/site-packages/click/core.py", line 535, in invoke
    return callback(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/snap/snapcraft/154/lib/python3.6/site-packages/snapcraft/cli/lifecycle.py", line 202, in cleanbuild
    lifecycle.cleanbuild(project_options, remote)
  File "/snap/snapcraft/154/lib/python3.6/site-packages/snapcraft/internal/lifecycle.py", line 343, in cleanbuild
    metadata=config.get_metadata(), remote=remote).execute()
  File "/snap/snapcraft/154/lib/python3.6/site-packages/snapcraft/internal/lxd.py", line 125, in execute
    raise e
  File "/snap/snapcraft/154/lib/python3.6/site-packages/snapcraft/internal/lxd.py", line 119, in execute
    self._container_run(command)
  File "/snap/snapcraft/154/lib/python3.6/site-packages/snapcraft/internal/lxd.py", line 86, in _container_run
    'HOME=/{}'.format(self._project_folder), '--'] + cmd)
  File "/snap/snapcraft/154/usr/lib/python3.6/subprocess.py", line 291, in check_call
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['lxc', 'exec', 'local:snapcraft-nonnoumenally-insentient-despina', '--env', 'HOME=/build_vscode', '--', 'snapcraft', 'snap', '--output', 'vscode_1.12.2-1494422229_amd64.snap']' returned non-zero exit status 1.

And this is the .desktop file:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Visual Studio Code
Comment=Code Editing. Redefined.
GenericName=Text Editor
Exec=/usr/share/code/code --unity-launch %U
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/code.png
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=Code
Categories=Utility;TextEditor;Development;IDE;
MimeTyp...

[Sergio Schvezov (sergiusens)]

oh, cleanbuild and desktop files would require us to first get said snapcraft SRUed.

[Leo Arias (elopio)]

we should probably install squashfuse and the snapcraft stable snap, instead of the deb.