snapcraft should allow for custom source fetch commands
Metadata
Current evaluation
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The feature request for custom source fetch commands in snapcraft was closed without implementation. Decade-long inactivity and zero comments indicate the request was abandoned and never addressed.
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Issue body
Some projects need supplementary tarballs to the base tarball. dpkg allows for that with: https://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/07/how-to-use-multiple-upstream-tarballs-in-debian-source-packages/
An example is LibreOffice which ships with multiple tarballs:
- orig.tar.xz
- orig-translations.tar.xz
- orig-helcontent2.tar.xz
- orig-src.tar.xz
While the former three are git submodules these days and can possibly be fetched along with snapcraft plugins, the latter is not:
Its a tarball of tarballs containing LibreOffice dependencies. On a developer-build, they are implicitly or explicitly downloaded on the first build with "make" or "make fetch" (see also the --with-all-tarballs, --with-external-tar and --disable-fetch-external switches). Upstream final releases also provide a tarball of these, but relying on those wouldnt help with tracking upstream in sync on master (plus there are some details about licensing, which is why e.g. Debian does not use the upstream tarballs unchanged).
I dont think it makes sense to reimplement this in snapcraft itself. But allowing a custom hook/script to perform these steps is needed then. Otherwise, not only are ugly workarounds needed (see e.g. the .fetch rule at https://git.launchpad.net/~bjoern-michaelsen/df-libreoffice/+git/libreoffice-snap-playground/tree/libreoffice-build/Makefile?id=6139b948dbfb47207e505d225ad955df3bc97b0d#n7), but even worse: these steps are performed during the "build" phase of the lifecycle, not in fetch, abusing the concept of the lifecycle to the absurd.
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b | — | — | The feature request for custom source fetch commands in snapcraft was closed without implementation. Decade-long inactivity and zero comments indicate the request was abandoned and never addressed. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b | — | — | Request for custom source fetch commands was closed without discussion or resolution. No implementation or alternative was adopted, indicating the feature request was abandoned. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 | — | — | Closed without implementation. The request for custom source fetch hooks to manage supplementary tarballs was abandoned due to lack of discussion. No resolution or feature addition occurred. |
Update history
No update history recorded yet.
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1655695 snapcraft help source doesn't show the sources docs | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | The request to alias snapcraft help source to snapcraft help sources was closed without implementation or discussion. No resolution or merge details were provided, indicating the feature request was abandoned. | |
| #1699 snapcraft <help> command | snapcraft | closed | Closed without implementation or discussion. No resolution or merge details were provided, indicating the snapcraft help command feature request was abandoned. | |
| #2020683 snapcraft remote-build cannot use a custom version of snapcraft | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Request to enable custom snapcraft versions in remote-build was closed without implementation. No resolution or merge details were provided, indicating the feature was abandoned. | |
| #1590349 snapcraft should have a 'version' command | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Feature request for a snapcraft version command alias was closed without implementation. No comments or resolution details were provided, indicating the request was abandoned due to prolonged inactivity. |