It's mostly a bugfix release that addresses general issues

Sep 29, 2016 10:20 GMT  ·  By

Canonical, through Sergio Schvezov, announced the release of yet another maintenance update to the Snapcraft open-source utility that helps application developers package their apps as Snaps.

Snapcraft 2.18 is now the latest stable release for the Snappy creator tool and comes only two weeks after the previous update, namely Snapcraft 2.17, to address various issues and bugs reported lately by users. For example, it attempts to add general fixes to the nodejs, python, make, and dump plugins, as well as to the user experience.

Moreover, the lifecycle for parts has been improved to run faster when attempting to calculate part dependencies, the "priming" operation should take less time now, the "cleanbuild" command was updated to support built-in image remotes, deprecated store APIs were replaced, automatic refresh was implemented for macaroons, and filesets support remote parts.

"We are pleased to announce the release of version 2.18 of Snapcraft. With the coming of spring (in some hemispheres), the focus switched to a spring cleaning mode; there are some reasons though for the version bump due to this feature: deb files can now be used as sources," says Sergio Schvezov in the mailing list announcement.

Here's how to install Snapcraft 2.18 in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Below, we've listed a useful set of commands for enjoying the latest Snapcraft release on your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system. First off, if you're already running Snapcraft, update it now. However, if you're new to Snapcraft, use the first two commands listed below to install it.

After installation, we recommend that you run the third command to install an example Snap that will help you get started faster with creating your own Snap, and the last command lets you view all of Snapcraft's options. Additionally, we also recommend that you try the Snapcraft GUI 3.0 application if you don't like working from CLI.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapcraft
sudo apt install snapcraft-examples
snapcraft --help