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Blog posts tagged
"snapcraft"

Igor Ljubuncic
20 August 2021

Snap usage metrics now available on the command line

Ubuntu Article

For years now, developers and publishers could view how well their snaps are performing in terms of usage and popularity through the Snap Store Web interface, using the metrics tab. This functionality allows people to examine the cause and effect of their work, like software updates, marketing campaigns, or other events. But it requires m ...

Igor Ljubuncic
13 August 2021

Snapcraft for Windows – Preview

Ubuntu Article

Two weeks ago, Snapcraft reached its fifth milestone release, 5.0. This version brings in a number of significant changes, including the removal of the base (core) snap, which has been relegated to the 4.X channel track. For snap developers, especially those working in mixed environments, the availability of the first preview release of S ...

Igor Ljubuncic
7 May 2021

The snap developer’s guide on how to migrate to new bases

Apps Article

A couple of weeks ago, we published an article about Ubuntu 16.04 entering Extended Security Maintenance (ESM), and the implications of this change for snap publishers. We talked about the different options available to developers and publishers who still may rely on the older bases in their build process – free Ubuntu Advantage (UA) toke ...

Igor Ljubuncic
23 April 2021

Better snap metadata handling coming your way soon

Ubuntu Article

Open the Snap Store, click on any application you like – you will now see a page full of useful tidbits – screenshots and videos, application description, last update, license, contact data, and other information. The data shown here is often the first impression the user gets about the software, and can be a deciding ...

Igor Ljubuncic
23 March 2021

How does Ubuntu 16.04 entering Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) affect snap publishers?

Cloud and server Article

At the end of April, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will reach the end of its five years of mainstream support and enter the Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) phase. If you’re a snap developer, and you have built or based your snaps on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) packages and libraries, you may want to know how this milestone ...

Alan Pope
12 March 2021

All About That Base

Ubuntu Article

Snapcraft is our delightful tool for building snaps. It’s not the only way to build them, but it’s certainly a popular one.  A benefit of Snapcraft is that typically a developer can configure the packaging definition once, and not have to update it for a long time. Snapcraft will keep cranking out releases, via CI ...

Igor Ljubuncic
4 March 2021

Honey, I Shrunk the Snap!

Desktop Article

The year is 1989. I bought a computer game called F-16: Combat Pilot, a flight simulator featuring free-flight, five types of single-player missions, a full campaign mode, serial-port multiplayer, and then some. Gloriously wrapped in four colors and magnetized on two single-density 5.25-inch floppy disks. Total size: 680 KB. Nowadays, it ...

Igor Ljubuncic
28 January 2021

Want to publish a snap? Here’s a list of dos and don’ts

Desktop Article

Technology is a medium that enables us to achieve things in life, ideally in a pleasant way. In the software world, operating systems, programming languages and application frameworks are the tools of the trade. But you need the right tool for the right job. If you’re thinking about writing or porting your code to snaps, ...

Alan Pope
21 January 2021

Compact and Bijou

Ubuntu Development

Snaps are designed to be self-contained packages of binaries, libraries and other assets. A snap might end up being quite bulky if the primary application it contains has many additional dependencies. This is a by-product of the snap needing to run on any Linux distribution where dependencies cannot always be expected to be installed. Thi ...

Ian Johnson
23 December 2020

Why LZO was chosen as the new compression method

Desktop Article

Everyone wants fast applications. Recently, we provided a mechanism to make snap applications launch faster by using the LZO format. We introduced this change because users reported desktop snaps starting more slowly than the same applications distributed via traditional, native Linux packaging formats like Deb or RPM. After a thorough in ...

Alan Pope
10 December 2020

Snaps: How we got here

Desktop Article

I’m celebrating nine years at Canonical, and coming up on 15 years since I started contributing to Ubuntu in the community. It’s been quite the ride, helping build, support and advocate for the most popular Linux desktop, and most used Linux distribution in the cloud. Over those years, we’ve strived to make it easy for ...

Igor Ljubuncic
5 November 2020

The Hunt for Rogue Time – How we investigated and solved the Chromium snap slow startup problem

Desktop Article

In October, we shared a blog post detailing significant snap startup time improvements due to the use of a new compression algorithm. In that article, we focused on the cold and hot application startups, but we did not delve much into the first-run setup scenario. While running our tests, we observed a rather interesting phenomenon, ...

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