Snap version of Atom doesn't save state on 20.04

Question

I do a lot of text editing with Atom as my IDE of choice. There seems to be some upgrade recently pushed to the Atom snap that prevents Atom from restoring the previous state. Whatever folders were previously open, if I close Atom and then reopen I get two empty files that Atom wants to save:

• /home/user/ATOM_DISABLE_SHELLING_OUT_FOR_ENVIRONMENT=false
• /usr/bin/atom

Every time, I have to close these files and then reopen my project folder. This happens on both my laptop and my desktop. Is anyone else seeing this? Is there a workaround, other than downloading the .deb installer from the Atom website?

Answer 1

I experienced the same problems with Ubuntu 20.04 and the upgraded snap for Atom.

I edited the atom.desktop file that the launcher uses to remove the refs to:

• /home/user/ATOM_DISABLE_SHELLING_OUT_FOR_ENVIRONMENT=false
• /usr/bin/atom

Following the thread at discuss.atom.io:

1. Install menulibre to easily edit the menu .desktop entries

   sudo apt install menulibre
   

2. Run menulibre and search for "atom"

3. Edit the Application detail Command to remove and save:

   ATOM_DISABLE_SHELLING_OUT_FOR_ENVIRONMENT=false /usr/bin/atom
   

Answer 2

Apparently my Google skills now are better than they were 15 minutes ago. This website reports the problem and seems to suggest a solution. I'll go try that.

But it seems that the snap package for Atom should be considered broken until the start script gets fixed.

Answer 3

Okay. I found the solution. The run command of the Atom includes the following code:

env BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT=/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/atom_atom.desktop /snap/bin/atom ATOM_DISABLE_SHELLING_OUT_FOR_ENVIRONMENT=false /usr/bin/atom %F

So, just delete the part /usr/bin/atom ATOM_DISABLE_SHELLING_OUT_FOR_ENVIRONMENT=false %F or change the whole code to:

env BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT=/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/atom_atom.desktop /snap/bin/atom

You can use Menulibre or AppEditor to edit the run command of Atom.

I think this is primarily because there's no file /usr/bin/atom and this code is probably for the .deb package. As this is the snap package, the package is stored in /snap/bin/atom and when Atom runs, unable to find the file /usr/bin/atom, it creates two blank files.

Answer 4

#Open this file:
sudo nano /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/atom_atom.desktop

# Replace this line:
Exec=env BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT=/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/atom_atom.desktop /snap/bin/atom ATOM_DISABLE_SHELLING_OUT_FOR_ENVIRONMENT=false /usr/bin/atom %F

# With this line:
Exec=env BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT=/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/atom_atom.desktop /snap/bin/atom %F

This is just a temporary work-around. The edits above get overwritten each time the snap package updates. I'm requesting a more permanent solution here.