The new changes are very important for Snappy's evolution

Feb 5, 2016 04:00 GMT  ·  By

Canonical, through Michael Vogt, has informed all Snappy enthusiasts about the immediate availability for download of new, updated all-snap images for the Snappy Ubuntu Core operating system.

The announcement comes one day after Canonical unveiled the groundbreaking Snapcraft 2.1 snappy creator tool release for the IoT- and embedded-oriented OS, and promises to introduce new features like an all-new snap.yaml format and the addition of the "snap" command, which will eventually replace the "snappy" command at a certain point in the evolution of the project.

Furthermore, the Ubuntu Snappy team has also managed to implement a new "snap find" command, as a replacement for the "snappy search" one, as well as to add the "ubuntu-core" name for the core snap for Raspberry Pi 2 users. Those of you who have built snaps using a Snapcraft utility from the 2.0 series need not worry about the new changes, as those snaps are most likely compatible already.

"This is a pretty big update and we recommend that you reflash your image (we expect this is the last disruptive transition). The most important change is that we moved to the new internal 'meta/snap.yaml' format which makes it partly incompatible with the previous images that used the 'meta/packages.yaml' format," said Michael Vogt, Software Developer at Canonical.

Users must reflash their old Snappy images

Canonical also informs Snappy Ubuntu Core users that most of the existing apps have been switched to the new "meta/snap.yaml" format in the rolling branch of the OS, and that the latest release of the Snapcraft snappy creator tool supports these changes.

However, be aware of the fact that the previous system-image-architecture-based images don't support the change, and you are urged to reflash with the new all-snap ones.