Your first snap: Use of icon in snapcraft.yaml is deprecated
Metadata
Current evaluation
Docs fixed in canonical/snapcraft#542 (commit a9f2a7d7a): the 'Your first snap' tutorial now tells users to place icon.png/icon.svg under setup/gui instead of the deprecated icon key. Shipped in snapcraft 2.10+16.10 and 2.10.1.
Resolution: closed resolved
Reason: elopio linked snapcraft PR #542, which merged as commit a9f2a7d7a updating the icon documentation; the janitor changelog records "Updated the documentation about the icon. (#542) (LP: #1578231)" in 2.10+16.10, and verification was confirmed done by elopio on 2016-06-08.
Evaluated by: mr-cal-bot
No scores available.
Issue body
https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/snappy/build-apps/your-first-snap/
In the last example snapscraft.yaml file icon: icon.png is listed. This has now been deprecated so the tutorial needs updating.
Instead, the github docs state the following:
Snap icon
Providing an icon for your snap is important, even for command-line applications, if for nothing else than discoverability from management interfaces such as store fronts like webdm.
To use an icon to represent the snap, just drop a PNG or SVG in setup/gui named icon.png for the former or icon.svg for the latter such that the (reduced) project tree would look like:
setup/gui/icon.png
snapcraft.yaml
or
setup/gui/icon.svg
snapcraft.yaml
[Impact]
* The documentation is outdated and misleading.
* This doc will end up in developer.ubuntu.com.
[Test Case]
* N/A.
[Regression Potential]
* None, just a documentation change.
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed resolved | Docs fixed in canonical/snapcraft#542 (commit a9f2a7d7a): the 'Your first snap' tutorial now tells users to place icon.png/icon.svg under setup/gui instead of the deprecated icon key. Shipped in snapcraft 2.10+16.10 and 2.10.1. | |
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed resolved | Tutorial icon guidance was corrected to use setup/gui/icon.png or icon.svg instead of deprecated snapcraft.yaml syntax; merged in canonical/snapcraft#542 (a9f2a7d7a). | |
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed resolved | Outdated icon docs fixed in snapcraft PR #542 (commit a9f2a7d7a), replacing deprecated `icon:` key guidance with setup/gui/icon.png in the tutorial. Shipped in snapcraft 2.10.1 and verified done. | |
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed resolved | Merged PR #542 (commit a9f2a7d7a) updated the tutorial to replace deprecated snapcraft.yaml icon usage with setup/gui/icon.png or icon.svg. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b | — | — | Documentation updated to replace the deprecated icon field in snapcraft.yaml with the setup/gui directory method. Tutorial corrected and verified. Issue closed. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b | — | — | Documentation fixed to replace the deprecated icon field in snapcraft.yaml with the setup/gui directory method. Issue closed after verification. |
Update history
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| created |
Related work
-
Likely Fixed By:
canonical/snapcraft#542
(confidence 99%)
Merged docs-only PR (a9f2a7d7a) replacing deprecated icon: key guidance with setup/gui/icon.png|svg; changelog references LP: #1578231.
-
Related To:
snapcraft (launchpad)#1561327
(confidence 60%)
Prior related work (snapcraft PR #409, commit d460d9db1) explaining the new setup/gui icon location in deprecation warnings.
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #914 meta: icon is now dedeprecated | snapcraft | merged | PR #914 merged as commit 4a4435cbe, re-deprecating the icon deprecation: the icon entry in snapcraft.yaml is again the preferred method, overriding any icon in the setup directory (LP: #1610268). | |
| #542 Updated the documentation about the icon. | snapcraft | merged | Docs-only PR merged as a9f2a7d7a: tutorial no longer tells users to set `icon` in snapcraft.yaml (deprecated) but to place icon.svg/icon.png under setup/gui. Closes LP bug #1578231. | |
| #1662034 Adding "icon" filed in the snapcraft.yaml template to define a package icon | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | The current `snapcraft init` template still omits icon guidance; the maintainer suggested a commented-out icon option, but no implementation followed. | |
| #409 Explain the new way to provide snap icons. | snapcraft | merged | Merged guidance clarifying the supported way to provide snap icons in snapcraft.yaml, resolving LP #1561327 (merge 4073f89fc). | |
| #1610268 icon and license are deprecated | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Icon paths in snapcraft.yaml were restored as preferred by canonical/snapcraft#914 (4a4435cbe); unsupported license metadata was removed by canonical/snapcraft#880 (1dab7aaed). | |
| #4936 snapcraft 7 ignores icon path in snapcraft.yaml | snapcraft | closed | Regression in core22 Snapcraft 7 (icon not copied when no apps section) was fixed by merged PR #4950 (commit c9d9cc227, 'fix: configure icon for snaps without apps'), backported and released in 7.5.6 to 7.x/stable. |