Howto: Install Snap Package Manager on Arch Linux

Snap is a package manager from Canonical the makers of Ubuntu.

Using it is considered a poor choice by some in the Linux community because of various design decisions considered offensive to libre computing such as auto-updates that cannot be disabled.

However, the snap package repository contains a lot of excellent software and in some rare cases you cannot reasonably install the software by any other means.

You should always prefer to use pacman and the Arch repository along with yay and the Arch User Repository (AUR) before turning to an alternate package manager such as snap.

Nevertherless, if you want to continue, proceed with caution.

There are two ways to install snap. Using the AUR and manually.

Install snap via the AUR (preferred method).

$ yay -S snapd

Alternatively, you can install snap manually.

$ cd ~
$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/snapd.git
$ cd snapd
$ makepkg -si
$ sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket
$ sudo ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap

You can now install snap packages.

Install PyCharm.

$ sudo snap install pycharm-community --classic

Install Visual Studio Code.

$ sudo snap install vscode --classic

Keep in mind, programs installed via snap will be auto-updated! If you do not want this intrusive behaviour (for example, you require running on a specific version) then you should install the programs via another method instead of via snap.