Release notes: Snapcraft 7

The team behind Snapcraft is pleased to announce the release of Snapcraft 7.0, a major update to the tool used to build snap packages.

This release marks the end of an initial process to rebuild our tools to work across a variety of projects, and many of the changes reflect that development work. This includes a new lifecycle and the introduction of Craft Parts as a generic cross-project mechanism for obtaining data from different sources.

Among the many any other updates, fixes and additions, the following are what we consider its highlights:

  • Support for the new core22 base
  • LXD promoted to be the new default build environment
  • A new store authentication mechanism

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

core22 support

These changes are now applicable when switching to core22:

  • A new craftctl tool replaces snapcraftctl
    This change also requires that:
    • craftctl default replaces snapcraftctl <step-name>
    • craftctl set version=<value> replaces snapcraftctl set-version <value>
  • CRAFT_* environment variables are defined during step execution, replacing SNAPCRAFT_* variables.
  • try has been removed from advanced grammar.
    This enables a more predictable planning phase without requiring an execution environment to attest what is tried. Grammar has now been generalised enough to allow for it to be added seamlessly to all snapcraft supported keywords.
  • An error is now generated when duplicate keys are used in snapcraft.yaml.
  • Snapcraft now makes use of the global environment keyword instead of command-chain (which allows for easy overriding)

The following are not currently supported with core22 :

  • Automatic classic snap building support (ORIGIN paths and linker loader setup)
  • Plugins: crystal, qmake
  • Some source handlers: 7zip, mercurial, bazaar, deb, rpm
  • Support for user-defined plugins.

Missing features will be ported and added to upcoming 7.x releases. If your snap relies on any of these features, please wait for the next releases to port them to use base: core22.

See How to migrate from core20 to core22 10 for help on migrating your snaps to the new base.

Build Providers

The build environment is now created through a new API called Craft Providers, and consequently, Snapcraft now defaults to using LXD.

Command Line Interface

Packing or Snapping

To align with the other craft tools, the snapping process now uses the pack command rather than the now deprecated snap command:

snapcraft pack

Running snapcraft with no arguments is still supported and defaults to packing.

Store operations with externally generated credentials

Snapcraft has migrated to using a new Craft Store tool to access the snap store. As a result, The authentication mechanism has changed, impacting any project already using CI/CD.

The snapcraft login --with command structure is no longer supported or required. The value of export login now needs to be exported into the appropriate environment variable (i.e.; SNAPCRAFT_STORE_CREDENTIALS).

Additionally, a working keyring is required to be able to store credentials locally.

Experimental login

To change the authentication mechanism, replace snapcraft login --enable-experimental-login, with SNAPCRAFT_STORE_AUTH=candid.

Listing snap names

The snapcraft list command to show which snap names are associated with your account has been deprecated and replaced with snapcraft names.

snapcraft names

Last updated 2 years ago.

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