Snapcraft advanced grammar

Several fields in snapcraft.yaml are dependent on the architecture or the operating system being exposed to Snapcraft. This is accomplished using specific and advanced syntax within the YAML consumed by the snapcraft command.

This advanced grammar is made up of three nestable statements: on, to and try:

The on statement

    - on <selector>[,<selector>...]:
        <grammar>|<primitive>
    - else[ fail]:
        <grammar>|<primitive>

<primitive> may be either a list or a scalar, depending on the keyword.

The body of the on clause is taken into account if every (AND, not OR) selector is true for the build environment. Currently the only selectors supported are host architectures (e.g. amd64).

If the on clause doesn’t match and is immediately followed by an else clause, the else clause must be satisfied. An on clause without an else clause is considered satisfied even if no selector matched. The else fail form allows for the generation of an error if a to clause is not matched.

The to statement

    - [on <selector>[,<selector>...] ]to <selector>[,<selector>...]:
        <grammar>|<primitive>
    - else[ fail]:
        <grammar>|<primitive>

<primitive> may be either a list or a scalar, depending on the keyword.

The body of the to clause is taken into account if every (AND, not OR) selector is true for the target environment. Currently the only selectors supported are target architectures (e.g. armhf).

If the to clause doesn’t match and is immediately followed by an else clause, the else clause must be satisfied. A to clause without an else clause is considered satisfied even if no selector matched. The else fail form allows for the generation of an error if a to clause is not matched.

Optionally an ‘on’ statement can precede a 'to' in the same line to form a compound statement. Used this way, the selectors of both statements have to be true. That is to say, both the build environment and the target have to be true for the body of the clause to be taken into account.

The try statement

    - try:
        <grammar>|<primitive>
    - else:
        <grammar>|<primitive>

<primitive> may be either a list or a scalar, depending on the keyword.

The body of the try clause is taken into account only when all primitives contained within it are valid (primitive validity is determined on a keyword-specific basis). If they are not all valid, and are immediately followed by else clauses, those are tried in order, and one of them must be satisfied. A try clause with no ‘else’ clause is considered satisfied even if it contains invalid primitives.

Example

parts:
  _part_name_:
    stage-packages:
    # libnuma1 package isn't available in armhf architecture, make it optional
    - try:
      - libnuma1

Last updated 10 months ago.