This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org: --- Title : I've packaged up Gnash as a snap, for modern linux Author : Remy van Elst Date : 07-12-2020 Last update : 15-05-2021 URL : https://raymii.org/s/blog/Ive_packaged_up_Gnash_as_a_Snap_for_modern_linux.html Format : Markdown/HTML --- [![Get it from the Snap Store](https://snapcraft.io/static/images/badges/en/snap-store-white.svg)](https://snapcraft.io/gnash-raymii) Last week I did something unexpected, I [packaged up Gnash as a snap][2]. Gnash is a GNU flash media player, not updated since 2011, and thus removed from the Ubuntu 20.04 repositories. The snap packaging is based on work by [phil roche][4], he wrote about re-packaging older debian packages with an Ubuntu 18.04/16.04 base layer as a snap. My gnash package is confined (no `--classic` needed), the source code for the snap [is on my github][3] and on any snap-enabled distro you can now `snap install gnash-raymii` to enjoy Gnash again.

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As the code is up [on github][3] and [Phil][4] has his code up as well, you should be able to easily re-package deb's as snaps as well. Pygopherd comes to mind, but any package from the Ubuntu repositories you might need fits the bill, search/replace gnash, test the confinement options and you're done. Here is a screenshot of Gnash running as a snap: ![gnash snap][6] **Update: 15-05-2021** I've updated the gnash snap package on user request to include a few extra commands, namely `dump-gnash`, `cygnal`, `rtmpget`, `gprocessor` `flvdumper` and `soldumper`. The main package is now also named `gnash-raymii`, so you'll no longer need to use the command `gnash-raymii.gnash`, you can just use `gnash-raymii`. Although the former is kept around for scripting. As the snap store tells me, this snap has almost 1500 active installs, way more than I ever expected. Happy to see that people actually still use gnash. ### Why re-package gnash as a snap? As you might know, [I sincerely dislike snap][1] and I actively avoid using it. However, a few co-workers do run Ubuntu and were fiddling around with my [docker gnash][5] guide, didn't get it to work and asked me for help. As I recently read [Phil's][4] article and this was a good way to put that into practice. As Gnash is no longer under active development for almost a decade, it is not in the Debian/Ubuntu repositories anymore, thus hard to install. But, Ubuntu 18.04 was the last release to have it in its repositories, so just as with the Docker guide, I used that as a base. Compiling gnash by hand is hard due to outdated dependencies (looking at you gstreamer). I might dislike snaps, as with most of my work I'm pragmatic enough to use whatever task suits the current situation best, and for this problem snaps were a good fit. Saves my current and future co-workers a bunch of time. ### Why run gnash? Some of my work depends on gnash, although it's actively being replaced with QT. Gnash in our case runs on the framebuffer of an embedded device, no network connectivity, no external input, so almost no risk. For development and testing we sometimes need to run gnash on my workstation with an SSH port forward to a development board. We can then locally interact with the UI. Also, the development board does not require a screen, which saves time and space in the development setup. We don't want the coffee machines to end up as e-waste in a few years, expected lifetime with regular maintenance is at least a decade, I suspect we'll use Gnash for just as long. All of our new machines use QT, but the older ones still get support and waranty. Here is gnash running the coffee machine user interface: ![gnash coffee][7] [2]: https://snapcraft.io/gnash-raymii [3]: https://github.com/RaymiiOrg/gnash-snap/ [4]: http://web.archive.org/web/20201207100511/https://philroche.net/2020/10/08/using-snaps-to-package-old-software/ [5]: /s/tutorials/Running_gnash_on_Ubuntu_20.04.html [6]: /s/inc/img/gnash-snap.png [7]: /s/inc/img/gnash1.png --- License: All the text on this website is free as in freedom unless stated otherwise. This means you can use it in any way you want, you can copy it, change it the way you like and republish it, as long as you release the (modified) content under the same license to give others the same freedoms you've got and place my name and a link to this site with the article as source. This site uses Google Analytics for statistics and Google Adwords for advertisements. You are tracked and Google knows everything about you. Use an adblocker like ublock-origin if you don't want it. All the code on this website is licensed under the GNU GPL v3 license unless already licensed under a license which does not allows this form of licensing or if another license is stated on that page / in that software: This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see . Just to be clear, the information on this website is for meant for educational purposes and you use it at your own risk. I do not take responsibility if you screw something up. Use common sense, do not 'rm -rf /' as root for example. If you have any questions then do not hesitate to contact me. See https://raymii.org/s/static/About.html for details.