fix(snap): ship a desktop entry so the app appears in the launcher

[janpetto]

Fixes the snap having no launcher entry, reported in #669.

Problem

After snap install tabularis the app does not appear in the app grid / app menu. It can only be launched from a terminal.

snapd exports launchers from meta/gui/ inside the snap. In the published revision that directory is empty, so nothing is exported:

$ ls -la /snap/tabularis/current/meta/gui/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  3 Aug 18 06:26 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 56 Aug 18 06:26 ..

$ ls /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/ | grep tabularis
(nothing)

The desktop file from the bundled .deb is present, but in usr/share/applications/, which snapd does not export.

Change

Adds snap/gui/tabularis.desktop. Files under snap/gui/ are copied verbatim into meta/gui/ at pack time, which is exactly the directory snapd reads.

The entry is written by hand rather than pointing snapcraft.yaml at the .deb's copy via the desktop: key, because that file is not good enough as shipped:

Categories=
Comment=tabularis - A database manager for developers
Exec=tabularis
Icon=tabularis
Name=tabularis

• Name=tabularis is lowercase (it follows productName in tauri.conf.json).
• Categories= is empty, so the entry files under no menu category.
• Icon=tabularis is a bare theme name; under confinement the host icon theme has no such icon, so it resolves to nothing.
• It declares MimeType=x-scheme-handler/tabularis but Exec= has no %u field code, so the registered deep-link handler is invoked with no URL.

The new entry fixes all four and keeps Categories= to registered values (Development main category, Database additional).

Verification

Verified on snapd 2.76.2 / core24 / Ubuntu 24.04 by installing a snap that contains this change and inspecting what snapd exported.

Method, stated precisely: I did not run snapcraft pack (no snapcraft or LXD on this machine). Instead I took the published revision 43 straight from /snap/tabularis/current, dropped this one file into meta/gui/, repacked with snap pack, and sideloaded it with --dangerous. The test snap is therefore byte-identical to the published snap plus exactly this file, which isolates the change. What this exercises is snapd's export behaviour; the snap/gui/ → meta/gui/ copy at pack time is standard snapcraft behaviour and is not covered by this test.

meta/gui/ in the packed test snap now contains the entry, where the published revision has an empty directory:

$ unsquashfs -l tabularis-desktoptest.snap | grep meta/gui
squashfs-root/meta/gui
squashfs-root/meta/gui/tabularis.desktop

After snap install --dangerous, snapd exported the launcher — the file that does not exist at all for the published revision:

$ cat /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/tabularis_tabularis.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
X-SnapInstanceName=tabularis
Type=Application
Name=Tabularis
Comment=Open-source database client with AI, notebooks, and plugins
X-SnapAppName=tabularis
Exec=/snap/bin/tabularis %u
Icon=/snap/tabularis/current/usr/share/icons/hicolor/512x512/apps/tabularis.png
Terminal=false
Categories=Development;Database;
StartupWMClass=tabularis
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/tabularis;

The two rewrites this change depends on both happened, and the only differences from the source file are the two X-Snap* keys snapd injects:

• Icon=${SNAP}/... was expanded to /snap/tabularis/current/..., and the target resolves (PNG image data, 512 x 512, 8-bit/color RGBA).
• Exec=tabularis %u became Exec=/snap/bin/tabularis %u — the bare app name resolves because it equals the snap name, and the %u field code survived, so the deep-link handler now receives its URL.

desktop-file-validate reports the exported file clean, no errors or warnings. The scheme handler registers: gio mime x-scheme-handler/tabularis lists tabularis_tabularis.desktop.

End to end, the entry also shows up where it is supposed to: with the test snap installed, Tabularis appears in the desktop environment with its icon and an "Open" button in App Center, and launching it from there starts the app.

One caveat on the literal in-repo file: desktop-file-validate flags Icon=${SNAP}/... as "looks like a relative path". That is a known false positive — the validator does not know about snapd's expansion, and the shipping DBeaver, Spotify and Discord snaps all use the same Icon=${SNAP}/... pattern and produce the identical error. Once expanded, as shown above, it validates clean.

Notes

• Deliberately not also adding desktop: usr/share/applications/tabularis.desktop to snapcraft.yaml. Both routes write meta/gui/tabularis.desktop; the snap/gui/ file alone is the whole change.
• No CI signal on this PR: ci.yml is path-filtered to src/**, src-tauri/** and friends, and snap.yml runs only on release: published or manual dispatch. Hence the manual evidence above. Happy to re-run any of it, or to verify through a real snapcraft pack if a maintainer wants that closed too.
• Out of scope, but worth separate follow-ups: bundle.category is unset in src-tauri/tauri.conf.json (the actual reason Categories= is empty in the .deb), and productName is lowercase. Both also affect the .deb, AppImage and macOS builds.

[kilo-code-bot]

Code Review Summary

Status: No Issues Found | Recommendation: Merge

Files Reviewed (1 file)

• snap/gui/tabularis.desktop

---

_{Reviewed by glm-5.2 · Input: 28.4K · Output: 6.3K · Cached: 182.5K}

[debba]

Thanks a lot for this, both the fix and the level of detail in the verification. I reviewed it locally: the desktop entry is correct on every field (scheme, icon path, app name match for the Exec rewrite) and the validator behaves exactly as you described, so I'm going to merge it as is.

I opened #671 for the .deb side you pointed out, in particular the missing %u in Exec (which breaks deep links on cold start for .deb users today) plus bundle.category and the lowercase menu name. If you're interested in following up on any of that, your support is more than welcome.