Ubuntu maintainer Canonical wants to re-architect Snap software packages, announced one of the group’s developers, Igor Ljubuncic. The application distribution platform will not cease to exist, nor will it lose its known advantages, but it will become more modern, light and “even more modular”, guarantees the professional.
The changes will be gathered in the code of Snapcraft, technology that underpins the distribution of Snap software. The aim is to create a more accessible distribution center for developers, requiring less work to make new software available in Snap packages.
Programs already downloaded in Snap will continue to work, so don’t worry if you already use one of them — packages based on core18 and core20 will continue to work after the update. The new Snapcraft will be used for core22 (or newer).
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Without breaking what already exists
In addition, a Fallback mechanism will be implemented for the Snaps construction process. With it, developers don’t even have to worry about choosing bases, since the best option will be selected automatically.
Ljubuncic’s announcement, however, does not go into details about how the platform will behave in the future – according to him, there are only prototypes. “The basic concept revolves around separating Snapcraft — into smaller, even more modular, reusable components that can be used in a variety of different products,” the programmer describes.
In the text, Ljubuncic doesn’t give any predictions about the release of this new Snap architecture and, considering that the planning seems to be in a preliminary stage, it should take at least a few months before developers have more concrete information.
