Bitcoin Core Snap on Ubuntu: Tiny font size

[schildbach]

The current Bitcoin Core Snap renders it's dialogs in ~5 pt text. For me, this is unreadable. See screenshot below.

Some system info:

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
Release:	20.04
Codename:	focal

$ apt list --upgradable 
Listing... Done

$ snap list
Name          Version    Rev    Tracking       Publisher     Notes
bitcoin-core  0.21.0     87     latest/stable  bitcoin-core  -
core          16-2.49.2  10958  latest/stable  canonical✓    core

[maflcko]

Do plain gitian binaries work fine?

[schildbach]

I just build bitcoin-qt from source and don't have this problem when running natively.

[maflcko]

Do the binaries from https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/ work?

[schildbach]

I don't want to run a downloaded binary. The build from source should be identical, shouldn't it?

[maflcko]

If you built from depends, then it should be functionally similar. If you built with system packages, it is functionally-wise a different GUI program.

[schildbach]

What does "build from depends" mean? I installed all the necessary Ubuntu/Debian packages described in build-unix.md and had to use the --with-incompatible-bdb flag (but believe this shouldn't affect the UI).

[schildbach]

I could also try the Debian packages if that helps.

[maflcko]

Depends is the build system that gitian uses, and that can be used locally as well: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/master/depends

[maflcko]

Is this still an issue after qt was bumped from 5.9 to 5.12 in Bitcoin Core 22.x in depends: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/06cd0da21fc14360e10204affe240b72715a0267#diff-0d7e256978e78897b774581dad22102138ce4ba46aa07faaef1ae6fc6178aad4 ?

Also, 23.x has qt bumped from 5.12 to 5.15 in depends: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/c870027cc261ebe6e0e2030df06619a8f663e80a

[schildbach]

Trying current 22.x:

$ sudo snap install bitcoin-core
2022-04-20T21:30:12+02:00 INFO Waiting for automatic snapd restart...
bitcoin-core 22.0 from Bitcoin Core installed

At least it's readable, but it's still too small for me. It does not seem to adhere to system font configuration.

[schildbach]

Note GitHub seems to enlarge the preview image, making it easily readable. If you click on it, you'll see the original size.

[maflcko]

Is this still an issue with 23.x?

[schildbach]

Is this still an issue with 23.x?

Yes.

[achow101]

I think this is more of an issue with the release binaries in general rather than an issue with the snaps. The release binaries use a statically linked Qt built by our own build system which means that various configurations about your desktop environment are not always found, and so the UI can look a bit wonky. This issue should probably be reopened in the gui repo if it is still a problem with recent versions.