Why do snap packages disappear when using the Fish shell?

If I take a clean install of Ubuntu 17.10, install a package via snap, and change my shell to fish, after logging in again the package is missing from gnome-shell's menu and from my favorites list.

Weirdly, this also only happens when using Wayland.

What could cause this issue? I can confirm my shell works normally and the path is normal. I can also confirm these applications run fine via snap run or their command line versions, but it's as if the *.desktop files are missing.

Create ~/.config/fish/config.fish if it doesn't exist, and add the following two lines

set PATH /var/lib/snapd/snap/bin $PATH
set XDG_DATA_DIRS /var/lib/snapd/desktop/:$XDG_DATA_DIRS

This will put snap applications on your path and make your shortcut icons available.

The problem: The issue is linked to your login shell.

The variable XDG_DATA_DIRS is set when /etc/profile.d is sourced (/etc/profile.d/apps-bin-path.sh)

But if you use fish-shell, as is your case, or zsh, you are not sourcing /etc/profile.d/ and therefore XDG_DATA_DIRS is never set and the .desktop files in /var/lib/snapd/desktop won't be found. That's not a bug but it's due to fish not being POSIX 1003.1 compatible. That meaning that these shells doesn't understand the bash syntax.

The workaround:

I can think of at least two workarounds.

1. The simple one is to reverse the default shell to bash with

   chsh -s /bin/bash
   

   And then add the line

   fish 
   

   At the end of the ~/.bashrc. By doing this your login shell would be bash and your /etc/profile.d would be sourced, but you would be using fish every time you open your terminal. And writing 'exit' on your terminal would jump back to bash.

2. A trickiest one is to keep fish as your login shell but force the /etc/profile.d to be sourced. To do this you need to follow these steps:

   1. from you fish shell install fisher and bass (make Bash utilities usable in Fish shell).

      curl -Lo ~/.config/fish/functions/fisher.fish --create-dirs https://git.io/fisher 
      
      # instruct fisher to download the bass package   
      fisher add edc/bass 
      

   2. edit your ~/.config/fish/config.fish (create It if it doesn't exist) and source every file under /etc/profile.d using bass.

      nano ~/.config/fish/config.fish
      

      (In another terminal ls the /etc/profile.d directory to get the list of files. Copy them)

      Paste the list in your nano terminal like this:

      bass source /etc/profile.d/apps-bin-path.sh 
      
      bass source /etc/profile.d/cedilla-portuguese.sh 
      
      bass source /etc/profile.d/vte-2.91.sh 
      
      bass source /etc/profile.d/bash_completion.sh 
      
      bass source /etc/profile.d/input-method-config.sh 
      
      bass source /etc/profile.d/xdg_dirs_desktop_session.sh 
      

      Save, close, close session or restart and 'ta-da'.

   With this option you keep fish as your login shell but you have to check the /etc/profile.d directory every now and then to make sure there isn't a new file your not sourcing.