Scriptlets

Scriptlets are shell scripts sourced directly from your snapcraft.yaml, to change the behaviour of a plugin.

Overview

Scriptlets can be triggered before the “build” step of a plugin, instead of it and after.
They are declared inside parts, using the following keywords: prepare, build and install.
Their working directory is the base build directory of the part (/parts/<part name>/build) and they are executed with /bin/sh.

Syntax

Scriptlets are declared with the following syntax:

parts:
  <part name>:
    <scriptlet keyword>: <shell script>

You can use a pipe on the first line to declare a multi-line script:

parts:
  <part name>:
    <scriptlet keyword>: |
      <multi-line>
      <shell script>

“prepare”

The prepare scriptlet is triggered between the pull and the build step of a plugin. It allows you to run commands on the source of a part before building it.

Example

snapcraft.yaml

name: test
version: 1
summary: test
description: test

parts:
  foo:
    source: .
    plugin: dump
    prepare: |
      echo "test" > testfile
      cp testfile testfile2

When you run snapcraft on this example, you can see that the final snap (content of the prime directory) contains the testfile and testfile2 files with our “test” string inside.

Here is the order of operations, the plugin:

installs all the required dependencies
pulls a local source (“.” means all the content of the project directory)

runs the prepare script:

echo "test" > testfile
cp testfile testfile2

Builds the part using the plugin’s build system

“build”

The build scriptlet replaces the build step of a plugin.

In some cases, default plugins don’t offer enough flexibility to build your application (specific env variables, custom build systems…), the build scriptlet gives you complete freedom to override the plugin’s build behaviour.

Example

snapcraft.yaml

name: test
version: 1
summary: test
description: test

parts:
  foo:
    source: .
    plugin: python
    python-version: "python3"
    build: |
      cd scripts
      python3 build_dev.py

Here is the order of operations, the plugin:

installs all the required dependencies
pulls a local source (“.” means all the content of the project directory)
runs the build script:
```
cd scripts
python3 build_dev.py
```

“install”

The install scriptlet is triggered after the build step of a plugin.

Example

snapcraft.yaml

name: test
version: 1
summary: test
description: test

parts:
  foo:
    source: .
    plugin: autotools
    install: |
      sed -i 's|/usr/bin|$SNAP/usr/bin|g' my-bin-artifact.sh
      mv my-bin-artifact.sh $SNAPCRAFT_PART_INSTALL/bin/my-bin-build.sh

Here is the order of operations, the plugin:

installs all the required dependencies
pulls a local source (“.” means all the content of the project directory)
runs the build step (in this case, the autotools plugin will run: ./configure, make, make install)

runs the install script: :

sed -i 's|/usr/bin|$SNAP/usr/bin|g' my-bin-artifact.sh
mv my-bin-artifact.sh $SNAPCRAFT_PART_INSTALL/bin/my-bin-build.sh

$SNAPCRAFT_PART_INSTALL being where snapcraft moves the build to when the build step finishes.