[snap] Favourite entry for chromium disappears with every update

[Ebuzer Taha Kanat]

$ snap version
snap 2.42
snapd 2.42
series 16
ubuntu 16.04
kernel 4.15.0-15-generic

$ snap list chromium
Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes
chromium 78.0.3904.70 920 stable canonical✓ -

After every upgrade which happens automatically with snap (which is great) launcher icon disappears and needed to be locked again after starting chromium after upgrade.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

This shouldn't happen, and I can't reproduce in a 16.04 VM running the stock Unity session.
Can you please share the output of the following command?

    gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Launcher favorites

Can you also please run the following command to attach additional debug information to the bug report?

    apport-collect 1851490

Thanks!

[Ebuzer Taha Kanat (ebuzer)]

['application://gnome-terminal.desktop', 'application://org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop', 'unity://expo-icon', 'unity://devices', 'application://red_hat_jboss_developer_studio.desktop', 'application://firefox.desktop', 'application://evince.desktop', 'application://apache_jmeter.desktop', 'application://gnome-system-monitor.desktop', 'application://firetools.desktop', 'application://org.gnome.SoundRecorder.desktop', 'application://transmission-gtk.desktop', 'application://virt-manager.desktop', 'unity://running-apps', 'application://chromium_chromium.desktop', 'unity://desktop-icon']

as for apport-collect 1851490 are there any ways to collect report i don't want to use this package thanks.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

'application://chromium_chromium.desktop' : this looks correct, the icon shouldn't disappear with every update. However I just managed to observe the problem in a xenial VM when refreshing the chromium snap from the stable to the beta channel. I'm suspecting Unity thinks the application is being uninstalled, so it removes the entry from the favorites, instead of just hiding it, like gnome-shell does.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

This seems to be the intended behaviour indeed. See unity::launcher::ApplicationLauncherIcon::UpdateDesktopFile()(https://git.launchpad.net/unity/tree/launcher/ApplicationLauncherIcon.cpp#n270).

[Ebuzer Taha Kanat (ebuzer)]

Do you think this should be dealt from Unity side or from Snap side? According to that answer i will try to move this issue to them.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

This should be addressed in Unity. I have already talked to Treviño (3v1n0 on launchpad) about it, and we agreed that increasing the timeout to 1min is an easy band-aid that should mitigate the problem most of the time, so I'll submit a merge request to do that.

[Alessandro Dolci (sandrello)]

I am experiencing the same problem in 19.10 (eoan), with the default Gnome DE, so no Unity involved.

The icon disappears for some seconds from the tray, and at the same time the browser seems to forget some data, such as favicons and most visited sites. I also tried to describe the issue here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1223484/snap-chromium-randomly-flushing-cache

Tell me if you need more info on this.

Thank you.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

The icon disappearing for a brief moment is because when an update is being installed, the old desktop file is removed, then the new one is installed, so there's an interval of time during which there is no desktop file. That's unfortunate, but harmless.

The other problem you describe is bug #1616650: the chromium snap is being refreshed while it is running, causing problems with the versioned profile directory. I suggest you enable the refresh app awareness experimental feature, which will prevent this from happening:

    snap set core experimental.refresh-app-awareness=true

(see https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/wip-refresh-app-awareness/10736 for details)

[Alessandro Dolci (sandrello)]

Thank you for your answer, I suspected something similar was happening, I'd say it makes sense.

I already enabled the feature you suggested, too bad I couldn't find that post by myself!

Thank you again!

[udippel (udippel)]

June 2022, still happening. kubuntu 20_04.
Here I have it on my desktop, as shortcut icon. Whenever snap is refreshed, the icon is gone.
(I do think this is this same bug.)