Example pre-built app¶

This how-to guide covers the steps, decisions, and implementation details that are unique when crafting a snap of a pre-built app, which takes the form of a tarball, zip file, or Debian package.

Crafting for compiled apps is platform-agnostic because the snap acts as a wrapper. You could wrap an app compiled with any underlying language or software, provided it was correctly compiled for the intended architecture.

For this reason, wrapping compiled apps is both a highly functional way to craft snaps as well as an effective fallback for languages and platforms that don’t have an official plugin in Snapcraft.

Example recipe for Geekbench¶

The following code comprises the recipe of a C project, Geekbench. This project is a popular PC hardware benchmarking suite.

Geekbench recipe

name: test-geekbench4
version: 4.2.0
summary: Cross-Platform Benchmark
description: |
  Geekbench 4 measures your system's power and tells
  you whether your computer is ready to roar. How
  strong is your mobile device or desktop computer?
  How will it perform when push comes to crunch?
  These are the questions that Geekbench can answer.
confinement: devmode
base: core18

parts:
  test-geekbench4:
    plugin: dump
    source: http://cdn.geekbench.com/Geekbench-$SNAPCRAFT_PROJECT_VERSION-Linux.tar.gz

apps:
  test-geekbench4:
    command: geekbench4

Add a compiled part¶

parts:
  test-geekbench4:
    plugin: dump
    source: http://cdn.geekbench.com/Geekbench-$SNAPCRAFT_PROJECT_VERSION-Linux.tar.gz

Compiled parts stored in archives are built with the dump plugin.

To add a compiled part:

Declare the general part keys, such as override-build, build-packages, and so on.
Set source to a local or remote tarball, zip file, or Debian package.
Set plugin: dump.