feat: Add base option for snapcraft

[filfreire]

Related to #7319 and #6976

This would unblock users facing issues related use to the older core18 base type.

Motivation for this PR came from Kong/insomnia#5531.

@mmaietta let me know if there's anything that I can do to help move either this PR or #6976 forward. I'm not sure if I'm also missing some changes e.g. (like the changeset mentioned bellow, or how to update the docs) Updated changeset, schema and docs.

[changeset-bot]

🦋 Changeset detected

Latest commit: 2db1366

The changes in this PR will be included in the next version bump.

This PR includes changesets to release 8 packages

Name	Type
app-builder-lib	Major
dmg-builder	Major
electron-builder-squirrel-windows	Major
electron-builder	Major
electron-forge-maker-appimage	Major
electron-forge-maker-nsis-web	Major
electron-forge-maker-nsis	Major
electron-forge-maker-snap	Major

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[mmaietta]

@filfreire this PR LGTM 👍 Thanks for the unit tests.

Not sure what steps remain on #6976 apart from fixing the tests. Is updating plug gnome-3-38-2004 a simple transition or would other things break? The PR needs to be rebased on latest master, but also the linux test suite failed for that PR

[filfreire]

@mmaietta, according to the official docs, the gnome plug supposedly depends on the base the user picks, so for instance:

• core18 is gnome-3-28-1804 or the updated gnome-3-34-1804 - https://snapcraft.io/docs/gnome-3-28-extension / https://snapcraft.io/docs/gnome-3-34-extension
• core20 is gnome-3-38-2004 - https://snapcraft.io/docs/gnome-3-38-extension
• core22 is gnome-42-2204 - https://snapcraft.io/docs/gnome-extension

BUT, I couldn't find anything though in contrary to using an old gnome plug on a recent core base snap. Just using latest gnome on an older base seems to be discouraged.

Even taking this into account I reckon adding the base option should be non-blocking for this PR.

Users that want to set a custom base should also look into setting the plugs they want on their electron build config and not rely on the default ones from electron-builder template.

[mmaietta]

Sounds solid 👍

[vishnusaivivek]

Hello @mmaietta,

I'm currently using electron-builder@24.6.4. While attempting to build snaps, I encountered an issue. Despite selecting core20 as the base, upon unpacking the snap and examining the snap.yml file, I noticed that the base remains as core18, the default base. Upon further investigation, I found that the changes from this merged commit seem to be absent in the latest version of electron-builder. I'm curious to know whether this omission was intentional or if it was overlooked by mistake.

Your insights on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
vishnusaivivek siriguppa

[mmaietta]

I'm curious to know whether this omission was intentional or if it was overlooked by mistake

Neither. It's still in the codebase:

electron-builder/packages/app-builder-lib/src/targets/snap.ts

Lines 72 to 78 in 549d07b

	if (options.base != null) {
	snap.base = options.base
	// from core22 onwards adapter is legacy
	if (Number(snap.base.split("core")[1]) >= 22) {
	delete appDescriptor.adapter
	}
	}

[vishnusaivivek]

@mmaietta Thank you for your swift response. I've come to realize that the problem was due to my own alterations, and it was resolved by modifying the configuration in the package.json file. Thank you once again for your assistance.

Best regards,
vishnusaivivek siriguppa