Release notes: Snapcraft 3.3

These are the release notes for Snapcraft 3.3.

For general details, including installation instructions, see Snapcraft overview, or take a look at Snapcraft release notes for other Snapcraft releases.

New core features

base: core

Support for base: core has been added.

This enables you to take advantage of the many new Snapcraft 3 features while using 16.04 as a base. Previously, you needed to use the 18.04 base.

Alternate directory for snapcraft.yaml

build-aux/snap is now supported as an alternative directory for snapcraft.yaml and its assets (i.e.; hooks, gui, …).

To avoid confusion, snapcraft now display what directory it is picking for assets, depending on where the snapcraft.yaml is found. It will only pick build-aux/snap for assets if the snapcraft.yaml is found in that path.

String validation

Snapcraft now produces a better error when the type detected for the version string is not a string.

Plugins

python

A minor fix to bring rebuilding capabilities to projects using the python plugin.

This means the days of seeing messages like the following should be long gone:

You must give at least one requirement to install (maybe you meant "pip install ...")

python and go

Expanded schema errors for users of the Go and Python, allowing for early discovery of non-valid uses of these plugins. Most importantly, this eliminates the cryptic error during build time when not using a combination of the source and <plugin-name>-packages keywords.

nodejs

Entries of type string are now supported in package.json for the bin keyword (previously, the plugin could only parse dictionary entries), this means that constructs from package.json, such as the following, will be parsed and interpreted correctly by Snapcraft:

{
  "name": "unnamed",
  "version": "1.0",
  "description": "Using string bin entries.",
  "main": "index.js",
  "bin": "bin/index.js",
}

Store

Register against a specific store

Brand stores are a commercial feature of the Snap Store, and it’s now possible to register your snap with one of these stores.

The following syntax is now allowed as part of the register command:

$ snapcraft register [--store <store>] <snap-name>

Full list of changes

The issues and features worked on for 3.3 can be seen on the 3.3 launchpad milestone which are reflected in the following change list:

List of changes for Snapcraft 3.3

Sergio Schvezov

  • many: support for “base: core” in snapcraft.yaml (#2499) (LP: #1819290)
  • python plugin: graceful ret when no packages set (#2498) (LP: #1794216)
  • many: support the use of build-aux/snap (#2496) (LP: #1805219)
  • nodejs pluging: support for type str bin entries (#2501) (LP: #1817553)
  • store: support registering to a specific store (#2479) (LP: #1820107)
  • meta: fix management of snap/local (#2502)
  • tests: improve login pexpect errors
  • tests: correctly retry registers
  • build providers: enhance provider errors (#2508) (LP: #1821217)
  • build providers: improve handling in snap logic (#2507) (LP: #1820864)
  • tests: filter per arch and fix snap build deps

Claudio Matsuoka

  • sources: handle network request errors (#2494)
  • store: handle invalid snap file errors (#2492)
  • tests: fix multipass error handling spread test (#2491)
  • plugins: improve python and go schema validation (#2473) (LP: #1806055)
  • cli: disable raven if not running from package (#2503)

Facundo Batista

  • schema: better ‘version’ error messages: wrong type and incorrect length (#2497)
    (LP: #1815812)

Last updated 5 years ago.

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