/gdrive

Making a Google Drive web app with Snapcraft and Brave

Building my own Gdrive web app using Snapcraft and Brave browser

Okay so I wanted to create a web app completely separated from my usual browser instance, so that I can switch to this app (Google Drive) more easily during my workflow (I am using GNOME as my desktop manager).

After a failure to create fake apps playing with the WM_CLASS and xdotool, I decided to use the jackhammer: Snapcraft. In order to create a whole new app. The resulting snap is of size 260MB.

Edit: it's easier and less memory expensive to do a debian package (see my repo debian_packaging in which I build a gmail web app as a .deb)

Thanks to Brave being awesome and open source, a snapcraft.yaml was available for snaping brave.

I changed the snapcraft.yaml to rename the snap app name, added a part with the dump plugin to move the gdrive.desktop and google_drive.png files to the right spot, in the snap usr/share/ folder. Also added the drive.google.com url to the default brave command, and that was it.

Build the snap

snapcraft

If you want to use lxd: snapcraft --use-lxd

Install the resulting .snap (in devmode)

snap install --devmode gdrive_<version>_amd64.snap

Launch !

gdrive

More

This snap could probably be optimized in size, considering my use of the web app. I don't need the browser audio capability for example.