Snapd in WSL

Smoke testing snapd in WSL-2!

This repository contains GitHub workflow designed to run on Windows to install and prepare a WSL-2 environment and go through several scenarios using snap packages.

At present there are three test scenarios available:

• A hello snap is installed and invoked.
• A docker snap is installed and used to spawn a command in an OCI container.
• A snapcraft snap is installed alongside lxd snap, then both are used to build a snap from source.

In all cases the snaps represent various grades of complexity and interaction with the Windows interoperability layer. In all cases snapd snap is installed first. Mechanism exist to allow selecting either a specific revision or a specific channel where snapd is installed from. This is designed such so that the workflow may be used to test upcoming releases of snapd.

The hello snap is the most basic test - it should work in all the cases as it has minimal interaction surface with the rest of the system. The docker snap is the extreme opposite of that, as it uses many complex elements of the stack. Lastly lxd and snapcraft used together to build an application snap represents a workload that developers may try to achieve using WSL.

GitHub Runner

This section describes the technical needs to run this workflow either in the public GitHub runners or with a self-hosted runner.

GitHub Runner (standard)

There's nothing you have to do. The workflow work out-of-the box on windows-latest runners.

GitHub Runner (self-hosted)

If you are unfamiliar with Windows, the following set of instructions might help:

• Install Windows 11
  • Use a local account for best results.
  • The user should be able to administer the system (belong to the Administrators group).
  • Update the system, install virtualization tools if not using bare metal.
• (Optional) Install openSSH server for easier administration.
  • It may be installed from application list, optional features
• (Optional) Set default shell used by openSSH to powershell by running

New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\OpenSSH" -Name DefaultShell -Value "C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -PropertyType String -Force

• Set script execution to bypass by running the following PowerShell command as the same user who will later on run the github-runner service.

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope CurrentUser

• (Optional) Snapshot the system using your virtual machine management software.
• Set up github-runner on Windows according to standard installation instructions for self-hosted runners offered by GitHub with the following exceptions:
  • Use the same user account you've created when installing Windows
  • Run github-runner as a service