snapd 2.0.5 released, new release cadence

There's a new release of snapd arriving in Ubuntu 16.04. As before, our fearless release manager Michael Vogt has crafted the work and made sure it can arrive to your machines on a timely basis.

You can see the changelog below, annotated with links to fixed bugs. I would only like to highlight one bug which improves experience of snaps under Unity 7.

New snapd releases are now planned to happen every week. You can expect a steady stream of fresh snappy goodness in both snapd and in the store. With this in mind we also plan to change the version scheme. Currently, as you can see below, we use 2.0.x for each micro-release. This system will quickly get meaningless so we will likely witch to a date-based release names instead . Expect to see a 2016W22 (or ..23) release next time around.

On the development front, many interesting changes are in the pipeline. While not a part of snapd 2.0.5 they should be released in the next few weeks, at most. You can expect applications to gain ability to play sound and music using the new pulseaudio interface. This ability, along with bug fixes to opengl should unlock the ability to deliver many popular games as snaps. Game on!

There's also ongoing work to allow sharing data from the classic Ubuntu and snaps. One of our first goals is to allow sharing fonts. This will improve the user experience of snaps that want to take advantage of custom, locally installed fonts. It should also allow us to package fonts as snaps in the near future. The underlying technology is very generic and I'm sure we'll find many interesting things to share this way.

As always, you can reach out to us on IRC (#snappy) and on the mailing list (snapcraft@lists.ubuntu.com, see this post for details). If you have any questions we will be happy to answer them.

See you next week!

snapd (2.0.5) xenial; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release: LP: #1583085
    - interfaces: add dbusmenu, freedesktop and kde notifications to
      unity7 (LP: #1573188)
    - daemon: make localSnapInfo return SnapState
    - cmd: make snap list with no snaps not special
    - debian: workaround for XDG_DATA_DIRS issues
    - cmd,po: fix conflicts, apply review from #1154
    - snap,store: load and store the private flag sent by the store in
      SideInfo
    - interfaces/apparmor/template.go: adjust /dev/shm to be more usable
    - store: use purchase decorator in Snap and FindSnaps
    - interfaces: first version of the networkmanager interface
    - snap, snappy: implement the new (minmimal) kernel spec
    - cmd/snap, debian: move manpage generation to depend on an environ
      key; also, fix completion

 -- Michael Vogt   Thu, 19 May 2016 15:29:16 +0200

snapd (2.0.4) xenial; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release:
    - interfaces: cleanup explicit denies
    - integration-tests: remove the ancient integration daemon tests
    - integration-tests: add network-bind interface test
    - integration-tests: add actual checks for undoing install
    - integration-tests: add store login test
    - snap: add certain implicit slots only on classic
    - integration-tests: add coverage flags to snapd.service ExecStart
      setting when building from branch
    - integration-tests: remove the tests for features removed in 16.04.
    - daemon, overlord/snapstate: "(de)activate" is no longer a thing
    - docs: update meta.md and security.md for current snappy
    - debian: always start snapd
    - integration-tests: add test for undoing failed install
    - overlord: handle ensureNext being in the past
    - overlord/snapstate,overlord/snapstate/backend,snappy: start
      backend porting LinkSnap and UnlinkSnap
    - debian/tests: add reboot capability to autopkgtest and execute
      snapPersistsSuite
    - daemon,snappy,progress: drop license agreement broken logic
    - daemon,client,cmd/snap: nice access denied message 
      (LP: #1574829)
    - daemon: add user parameter to all commands
    - snap, store: rework purchase methods into decorators
    - many: simplify release package and add OnClassic
    - interfaces: miscellaneous policy updates
    - snappy,wrappers: move desktop files handling to wrappers
    - snappy: remove some obviously dead code
    - interfaces/builtin: quote apparmor label
    - many: remove the gadget yaml support from snappy
    - snappy,systemd,wrappers: move service units generation to wrappers
    - store: add method to determine if a snap must be bought
    - store: add methods to read purchases from the store
    - wrappers,snappy: move binary wrapper generation to new package
      wrappers
    - snap: add `snap help` command
    - integration-tests: remove framework-test data and avoid using
      config-snap for now
    - builtin/unity7.go: allow using gmenu. Closes: LP:#1576287
    - add integration test to verify fix for LP:#1571721

 -- Michael Vogt   Fri, 13 May 2016 17:19:37 -0700