Some desktop snaps are no longer visible in the apps menu

[Alessandro Astone]

[ Impact ]

Malcontent is a parental control mechanism implemented in GNOME Shell.
It supports hiding applications from the application menu.

Some desktop snaps like telegram-desktop are no longer visible in GNOME Shell when libmalcontent is installed, even without any filters applied. Which snaps are hidden depends on the numbers of command-line arguments they specify in the Exec line. If it's more than 2, then the snap will be hidden.
For example, telegram-desktop uses:

Exec=/snap/bin/telegram-desktop -- %U

Ubuntu ships a patch in malcontent to allow filtering non-flatpak applications too.
This patch assumed that a desktop snap Exec= line would always follow the format `Exec=env BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT=foo.desktop /snap/bin/foo arg1 arg2`, so it would interpret the third argument as the absolute binary path.

That was changed in snapd version 2.72 to remove the BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT environment variable, so the Exec line now follows the format `Exec=/snap/bin/foo arg1 arg2`. The third argument is no longer the binary's absolute path, and things break.

Malcontent needs to be adapted to not assume that the snap binary is always the third argument.

[ Test Plan ]

1. Install the `malcontent` deb package
   -> this is pre-installed on some OEM installs.
2. Log-out, log-in again.
3. Install snapd 2.72 or newer, available from the candidate channel:
   `sudo snap refresh snapd --candidate`
4. Install the `telegram-desktop` snap
5. Open the GNOME Shell application launcher
6. Search for Telegram
7. Verify that the Telegram app is listed.

[ Where problems could occur ]

Problems would manifest with applications being incorrectly filtered out or not filtered out.

The patch should make sure that it is future-proof by not assuming the position of the binary path in the command-line a-priori.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Sent fix to debian: https://salsa.debian.org/freedesktop-team/malcontent/-/merge_requests/12

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package malcontent - 0.13.1-1ubuntu1

---------------
malcontent (0.13.1-1ubuntu1) resolute; urgency=medium

  * Sync with Debian. Remaining changes:
    - Add patch to hide the Software Installation restrictions
    - Add patch and adjust install files to not show help for
      that hidden feature
  * d/p: Fix filtering snaps after snapd 2.72 (LP: #2128350)
  * d/p: Refresh Ubuntu patches

malcontent (0.13.1-1) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Team upload
  * New upstream release
  * Cherry-pick an accessibility fix (LP: #2116954)
  * Update gir handling
  * debian/watch: Convert to Version: 5
  * Remove obsolete Rules-Requires-Root: no field
  * Bump Standards Version to 4.7.2

malcontent (0.13.0-2) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Team upload
  * Replace build-dep on obsolete appstream-util with appstream

 -- Alessandro Astone <email address hidden> Fri, 17 Oct 2025 19:25:30 +0200

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Hello Alessandro, or anyone else affected,

Accepted malcontent into questing-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/malcontent/0.13.0-1ubuntu2.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-questing to verification-done-questing. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-questing. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Hello Alessandro, or anyone else affected,

Accepted malcontent into plucky-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/malcontent/0.13.0-1ubuntu1.2 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-plucky to verification-done-plucky. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-plucky. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Tested in Ubuntu 25.04:

$ snap info snapd | grep installed:
installed: 2.72 (25577) 53MB snapd

$ apt policy libmalcontent-0-0
libmalcontent-0-0:
  Installed: 0.13.0-1ubuntu1.2
  Candidate: 0.13.0-1ubuntu1.2

Telegram desktop is visible again in GNOME's applications menu.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Tested in Ubuntu 25.10:

$ snap info snapd | grep installed:
installed: 2.72 (25577) 53MB snapd

$ apt policy libmalcontent-0-0
libmalcontent-0-0:
  Installed: 0.13.0-1ubuntu2.1
  Candidate: 0.13.0-1ubuntu2.1

Telegram desktop is visible again in GNOME's applications menu.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Hello Alessandro, or anyone else affected,

Accepted malcontent into noble-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/malcontent/0.11.1-1ubuntu1.3 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-noble to verification-done-noble. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-noble. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Tested in Ubuntu 24.04:

$ snap info snapd | grep installed:
installed: 2.72 (25577) 53MB snapd

$ apt policy libmalcontent-0-0
libmalcontent-0-0:
  Installed: 0.11.1-1ubuntu1.3
  Candidate: 0.11.1-1ubuntu1.3

Telegram desktop is visible again in GNOME's applications menu.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

By the way snapd 2.72 has already been pushed to the stable channel which means we can skip step 3 of the test case.

[Francois Thirioux (fthx)]

Hello Jeremy,

I can confirm it's ok now at least in Debian 13 (0.13.0-2+deb13u1).
VS Code appears again. Thanks!

[Nick Rosbrook (enr0n)]

The verification of the Stable Release Update for malcontent has completed successfully and the package is now being released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package malcontent - 0.13.0-1ubuntu2.1

---------------
malcontent (0.13.0-1ubuntu2.1) questing; urgency=medium

  * d/p: Fix filtering snaps after snapd 2.72 (LP: #2128350)

 -- Alessandro Astone <email address hidden> Wed, 22 Oct 2025 19:14:15 +0200

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package malcontent - 0.13.0-1ubuntu1.2

---------------
malcontent (0.13.0-1ubuntu1.2) plucky; urgency=medium

  * d/p: Fix filtering snaps after snapd 2.72 (LP: #2128350)

 -- Alessandro Astone <email address hidden> Thu, 23 Oct 2025 11:01:14 +0200

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package malcontent - 0.11.1-1ubuntu1.3

---------------
malcontent (0.11.1-1ubuntu1.3) noble; urgency=medium

  * d/p: Fix filtering snaps after snapd 2.72 (LP: #2128350)

 -- Alessandro Astone <email address hidden> Thu, 23 Oct 2025 11:59:37 +0200

[Nick Rosbrook (enr0n)]

Hello Alessandro, or anyone else affected,

Accepted malcontent into jammy-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/malcontent/0.10.4-1ubuntu0.22.04.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-jammy to verification-done-jammy. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-jammy. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Tested in Ubuntu 22.04

$ snap info snapd | grep installed:
installed: 2.72 (25577) 53MB snapd

$ apt policy malcontent
malcontent:
  Installed: 0.10.4-1ubuntu0.22.04.1
  Candidate: 0.10.4-1ubuntu0.22.04.1
  Version table:
 *** 0.10.4-1ubuntu0.22.04.1 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-proposed/universe amd64 Packages
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-proposed/universe i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.10.4-1ubuntu0.22.04 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/universe amd64 Packages
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/universe i386 Packages
     0.10.4-1 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy/universe amd64 Packages
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy/universe i386 Packages

Telegram desktop is visible again in GNOME's applications menu.

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

Unsubscribing ~ubuntu-sponsors since all seems to be sponsored.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package malcontent - 0.10.4-1ubuntu0.22.04.1

---------------
malcontent (0.10.4-1ubuntu0.22.04.1) jammy; urgency=medium

  * d/p: Fix filtering snaps after snapd 2.72 (LP: #2128350)

 -- Alessandro Astone <email address hidden> Thu, 23 Oct 2025 13:21:13 +0200