14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical released this week the first point release to the Snapcraft 3.x series, its open-source tool that lets application developers package their apps as Snap containers for distribution across multiple operating systems.
Snapcraft 3.1 is now available as a minor update to the Snapcraft 3.x series, adding build environment improvements to allow you to be once again able to clean parts using the "base" keyword while running the "snapcraft clean < part-name >" command, and offering you a more intuitive cleaning of steps from specific parts.
The "cmake" and "rust" plugins have been updated as well in Snapcraft 3.1. While the "cmake" plugin gets two new features to allow you to package more applications in the Snap universal binary format, such as KDE apps, the "rust" plugin was revamped to work better with the non-legacy rustup tool.
"The plugin can now leverage build-snaps into the build environment by using the path to the list of build-snaps declared in a the part using the cmake plugin as arguments to CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH. Additionally, cmake primitives are now used to drive the build instead of just calling make," reads the release notes.
Appstream metadata extractor improvements, better OS X support
Also improved in the Snapcraft 3.1 release is the appstream metadata extractor, which can now properly filter xml:lang and handle tags inside connected nodes. Moreover, Snapcraft will now accurately find desktop files from appstream "launchable" entries, as well as by falling back to legacy mode and fetch it from the appstream id.
Last but not least, this release improves support for the Mac OS X platform when using the Snapcraft tool via Homebrew. As such, users will be prompted to install the "multipass" tool when they launch Snapcraft for the first time if it's not already installed. You can download Snapcraft 3.1 right now from GitHub, where you'll also be able to study the complete changelong, or from Ubuntu's repositories.