What tools to work with pkgs installed thru snap system

[Chris Green]

On Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 09:59:26AM -0500, hput via ubuntu-users wrote:
> After googling a bit I still haven't found out if there are tools
> similar to the powerfull tools available in apt/aptitude/apt-get
> systems.
> 
> Or other powerful tools such as dpkg for such things as
>   dpkg -L pkgname ... to list out the files installed
> 
> I found a wikipedia article about snap .. but still did not learn the
> mechanics.
> 
> Some pointers to URLs on the subject... particularly URLS that are
> ubuntu specific ... snap system related, would be most welcome.
> 
Personally I think that snap is a disaster.

It's one of several ways to include all the libraries and dependencies
required by a program with the program itself rather than using the
system's library files.

There are good reasons for wanting to do this sometimes:-

    One may want to install the 'latest' version of a program on
    systems where the libraries are not up-to-date enough.

    You may want to make a program that uses non-standard libraries
    installable for the 'ordinary' user.

    Keeping a program in step with the standard distribution libraries
    is difficult


Howver, IMHO, there are better systems than snap for doing this - the
appimage format that Digikam uses for example.  Snap seems to be a
sort of worst of both worlds compromise, it *isn't* wholly independent
of the operating system and libraries but it does produce a huge
executable including [most of] the libraries it needs.

I have removed snap/snapd from all my Ubuntu family systems.

-- 
Chris Green