Why write this?

• The examples I've found are outdated and/or wrong.
• There isn't much information on snapping electron apps.
• Found people asking the same question without any acceptable answers.

Note: electron-packager can build directly to snap packages and avoid these steps completely.

Setup the Build Process

Compiling NodeJS

Unfortunately, the build process quite work using just the nodejs plugin. So, you have to override the build and install process with manual operations to get it going.

parts:
  node-app:
    plugin: nodejs
    source: .
    build: |
      npm run build &&
      ./node_modules/.bin/electron-packager . --overwrite --platform=linux --arch=x64 --output=release-build --prune=true
    install: |
      cp -v -r SafexWallet-linux-x64 $SNAPCRAFT_PART_INSTALL/wallet

More info on parts like build and install, check out the following link
https://snapcraft.io/docs/reference/plugins/common

To find out more details about the plugin, snapcraft details
snapcraft help nodejs

Adding GTK Dependancies

Electron uses the GTK toolkit to build it's GUI. Snapcraft includes functionality to help you add the necessary dependencies.

Example

parts:
  node-app:
    plugin: nodejs
    source: .
    build: |
      npm run build &&
      ./node_modules/.bin/electron-packager . --overwrite --platform=linux --arch=x64 --output=release-build --prune=true
    install: |
      cp -v -r SafexWallet-linux-x64 $SNAPCRAFT_PART_INSTALL/wallet
    after: [ desktop-gtk2 ]

If you want to learn more about exactly desktop-gtk2 is doing, what dependencies it adds and what plugs are recommended, use this command.

snapcraft define desktop-gtk2

Add a Launch

Adding a Wrapper

You'll need a wrapper to load all gtk libraries necessary to run the binary. The good thing is snapcraft has prebuilt functionality for this. All you need to do is prefix your command with desktop-launch

app:
  test:
    command: desktop-launch $SNAP/my-node-command

Build your Snap

Build it.

snapcraft clean && snapcraft

Finished!

Examples

https://github.com/jeteokeeffe/safex-wallet-snap.git