Canonical announces universal snap packages

[B.K. Johnson]

Canonical announces universal snap packages

see Jack Wallen's article on the announcement here.
Some excerpts from the article:

What was that announcement? Developers from multiple Linux distributions (and companies) are collaborating on the "snap" universal Linux package format. This universal package would enable a single binary package to work perfectly (and securely) on any Linux desktop, server, cloud, or device. In fact, this community of developers (from Arch, Gentoo, Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu), have come together to create Snapcraft.io. This website provides a publication mechanism for any software in any Linux environment.

Updates are also improved with snaps. Snap package updates will be automatically delivered. Should the update fail, it is cancelled. Should the update be buggy, it can be easily rolled back to a previous state. All of this combined will drastically improve the flow of features, fixes, and the feedback cycle for commercial and open source applications.

The only caveat to this is that Canonical sent out the alert to Red Hat but has yet to hear back from them. This could mean commercial snaps are limited to SUSE.

[Robert123]

Hi BK,

Check this out from Spatry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROyqnJg1Ipo

[B.K. Johnson]

Thanks for the link Robert123. Interesting. It's early days yet, but a good start. Removal and bloat control are going to be key factors in its acceptance. RH will always do what they want.
Cheers.

[learnhow2code]

RH will always do what they want.

i dont mind that so much; its the lengths they go to getting other people to do what they want thats so annoying.

i agree with you on removal and bloat. the idea of a universal binary is always tempting, but one of the things i always liked about puppy was its no-bs package system.

to be fair, every sort of package (including source-based no-packaging) has its own kind of bs. so i should say "low-bs" system. "universal" binaries will certainly have drawbacks, and not everyone will want them.

some breeds of puppy may include universal binary support-- others may eschew it for exactly the pitfalls you mentioned. while people are waiting for perfection, choice is already here.

[Robert123]

Not fan of having to have Ubuntu core there. When I think of Puppy I think of something small fast and simply built compared to the complex way other distros are built and boy busybox compared to systemd - wow.

[musher0]

Hi gang.

"Snap", "deb", "rpm", "tgz", what have you...

Puppy should get its packages directly from the devs / authors, not through an
intermediary such as ubuntu or slackware or debian.

For one thing, we'd get the latest packages.
#2, the core executables of Puppy would be entirely Puppy-built, not borrowed.

After that base is assured, ready-made packages could be imported from anywhere
reputable, because we couldn't realistically compile 20,000 + packages for Puppy.

If a "snap" package is more universal, all the better.

BFN.


BFN.