Comment 37 for bug 1643706

Hi John,

I've outlined my use case here:

How to give snaps access to /somedir - Ask Ubuntu
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1033344/how-to-give-snaps-access-to-somedir

I want to access my files in /somedir. I don't want snaps to dictate '/home', '/mnt' or any other special directories. It is fine that these are the defaults _as long as I can change these directories in a configuration file_.

vlc /somedir/video.avi

should start the video including any /somedir/video.srt subtitles if present, just like a standard client does without any additional interaction from me.

Is there better documentation on what "deskop portals" are than https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/portal-docs.html?

That links says:

> Requests made via portal interfaces generally involve user interaction.

That means a dialog box, right? Will it be possible to configure "portals" somehow so that vlc subsequently can access /somedir recursively _without_ me, the user, noticing? Because them I'm happy! :-)

In the https://askubuntu.com/questions/1033344/how-to-give-snaps-access-to-somedir link above, Zygmunt says:

> There's no way to do that that is general, safe and sound.
> I know everyone loves to customise their filesystem but that
> has some cost and this is one of them."

I beg to differ. If course it is possible to do that in a way that is general, safe and sound. Perhaps it goes against the current design of snapd. Perhaps (e.g. for that reason) this project chooses not to do it - ever. But to say it isn't possible is simply not true. (Docker can do it, apache2 and many other apps can do it).

So would it be possible for you guys to outline how it will work once the Portals integration and/or Zyga's project works?

* Will I be able to add custom directories to the list of already-trusted directories?
* Will I be met with additional dialogs when I type vlc /somedir/video.avi? How many, given that vlc searches for a tries to open .srt files too?
* Will the same be true if I double-click on file.avi from e.g. xfce's thunar file manager?

Being met with additional dialog boxes to confirm that I want to open a file in /somedir (and then again when accessing the .srt file?), may be fine for others, but does not constitute the user experience I'm looking for. Sure, it is better, but not good enough for my use case (a NAS mounted on /somedir). I'll be annoyed with it every single time I use it.

If you yourself had 99% of your videos under /somedir, would you yourself be happy with having to confirm something every time you wanted to open vlc /somedir/video.avi?

In this thread I thought that finally it was going to be possible. If you decide not to cater to my use case, that is fine, it is your project. But then please just say so explicitly, so I'll *know* that snapd will never be for me so I can choose something else and not wait for portals or whatever other developments that don't solve my use case anyway.