GSoC/2024/StatusReports/soumyadghosh

Improving Snap Ecosystem in KDE

The current scneario of snaps in KDE and specifically in the discover is not that great. The permission manager for snaps is also very poor and inconsistent. This project aims to look into

1. Fixing the snap backend in discover
2. Fixing the UI of discover like the options of channels of a snap is not shown until the snap isn't installed and others
3. Creating a snap kcm for the plasma-settings and implement the snap permission manager there.

Mentor

Scarlett Moore

Weekly Reports

Week 1-2

1. Added verification support for snap publishers in Discover
2. Added Channel selection support for snaps even before installing the snap
3. Improvement in the KDE Sdk for snaps, specifically for the qtmultimedia build

Week 3-7

1. Fixed and improved the snap package of KClock, Kweather and many others
2. Worked on an MR that'll expose more possible links available with a snap
3. Added the support for website and storePage link in Discover for snaps
4. Worked on an MR to launch snaps from the Discover using DBus instead of using some command line hacks

Week 8-10

1. Started working on a CI for automatically releasing the snaps to the store whenever there is a new tag
2. Created a new snap package for Marknote

Week 11-16

1. Created the backend for the new Shiny Snap KCM
2. Created the frontend for the Snap KCM
3. Fixed snap package for NeoChat
4. Simplified the Icon fetching mechanism for Discover for snaps
5. Created a Snap package for the Snap KCM

Blogs in Planet KDE:

• https://planet.kde.org/page/20/#10
• https://planet.kde.org/page/15/#4

Related Merge Requests & Repos:

• https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=all&author_username=soumyadghosh
• https://invent.kde.org/utilities/kclock/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=all&author_username=soumyadghosh
• https://invent.kde.org/utilities/kweather/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=all&author_username=soumyadghosh
• https://invent.kde.org/office/marknote/-/merge_requests/44
• https://invent.kde.org/network/neochat/-/merge_requests/1916
• https://invent.kde.org/soumyadghosh/snap-kcm
• https://github.com/canonical/snapd-glib/pulls/soumyaDghosh
• https://github.com/soumyaDghosh/kde-snap-ci
• https://github.com/soumyaDghosh/office-kde

Some Screenshots and Videos:

• https://soumyadghosh.github.io/website/interns/gsoc-2024/gsoc-week-1-week-2/kde-discover-channel-after.mp4