14 DAY TRIAL // After announcing the release of the first Beta images of the upcoming Ubuntu Snappy Core 16 operating system for embedded and IoT devices, Canonical proudly informed the community about the availability of Snapraft 2.16 in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
According to the release notes, Snapcraft 2.16 comes two weeks after the release of the previous maintenance update, namely Snapcraft 2.15.1, and it introduces a bunch of new variables that application developers who want to package their apps in the Snap universal package format can use within the snapcraft.yaml file and export in the environment when plugins run.
These are SNAPCRAFT_PROJECT_NAME, SNAPCRAFT_PROJECT_VERSION, SNAPCRAFT_PART_INSTALL, and SNAPCRAFT_STAGE. Moreover, Snapcraft 2.16 adds support for parameters to the ANT plugin, and it looks like the "snapcraft register --private" command was updated to support registration of private Snaps.
Last but not least, it is now possible to set a grade of "stable" or "devel" in the snapcraft.yaml file, so that your Snap package will land in the repository where it was meant to be uploaded, namely the stable or candidate channels. There are also small enhancements to filesets and the "snapcraft cleanbuild --debug" command.
Installing Snapcraft 2.16 in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Snapcraft 2.16 is now available in the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) repositories, so all you have to do to upgrade is apply all existing updates using Ubuntu Software or Synaptic Package Manager. Also, you can only update Snapcraft or install it on your Ubuntu PC using the following set of commands in the Terminal app.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapcraft
If you're new to Snapcraft, you can also install a bunch of examples that will guide you to the creation of your first Snap package. Just run the first command listed below. Also, make sure that you get familiar with the Snapcraft tool by running the second command below, which will list all of its subcommands and options.
sudo apt install snapcraft-examples
snapcraft --help