How To Install Snap on Arch Linux / Manjaro

In this guide, I’ll take you through the steps to install and use snapd service on Arch Linux / Manjaro and other Arch based Linux distributions. Snap is a software deployment and package management tool originally designed and built by Canonical which works across a range of Linux distributions.

The packages are called ‘snaps‘ and the tool for using them is ‘snapd‘. Snap enables you to run distro-agnostic upstream software packages on your system. Snap bundles most of the libraries and runtimes needed by the application and can be updated and reverted without affecting the rest of the system.

Install Snap on Arch Linux / Manjaro

To install Snapd on Arch Linux, you can use pacman package manager or AUR.

sudo pacman -S snapd

For AUR, you need to have AUR helper installed. In this guide, I recommend yay which can easily be installed using:

• Install yay AUR helper on Arch/Manjaro

Once yay is installed, use it to install Snap.

yay -S --noconfirm --needed snapd

Start and enable snapd service.

sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket

Confirm service status.

$ systemctl status snapd.socket
● snapd.socket - Socket activation for snappy daemon
    Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/snapd.socket; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
    Active: active (listening) since Sat 2019-03-30 13:34:57 EAT; 1min 41s ago
    Listen: /run/snapd.socket (Stream)
            /run/snapd-snap.socket (Stream)
     Tasks: 0 (limit: 4915)
    Memory: 32.0K
    CGroup: /system.slice/snapd.socket
 Mar 30 13:34:57 arch.localhost systemd[1]: Starting Socket activation for snappy daemon.
 Mar 30 13:34:57 arch.localhost systemd[1]: Listening on Socket activation for snappy daemon.

To enable classic snap support, create a symbolic link between /var/lib/snapd/snap and /snap:

sudo ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap 

Since the binary file is located under,/snap/bin/ we need to add this to the $PATHvariable.

echo "export PATH=\$PATH:\/snap/bin/" | sudo tee -a /etc/profile

Source the file to get new PATH

source /etc/profile

Snapd is now ready for use. You interact with it using the snap command. See help page below:

snap --help

Test your system by installing the hello-world snap and make sure it runs correctly:

$ sudo snap install hello-world
2019-03-30T13:41:22+03:00 INFO Waiting for restart…
hello-world 6.3 from Canonical✓ installed

List installed snaps.

$ snap list
 Name         Version  Rev   Tracking  Publisher   Notes
 core         16-2.38  6673  stable    canonical✓  core
 hello-world  6.3      27    stable    canonical✓  -

Remove snap.

$ sudo snap remove hello-world
hello-world removed

Congratulations!. Snap has been installed successfully on your Arch/Manjaro. Check Snap documentation for more.