Canonical has revealed plans for an upcoming major overhaul of the Snapcraft toolkit used to create, distribute and update self-contained packages in the Snap format. It is noted that the current Snapcraft code base is considered legacy and will be used if it is necessary to use old technologies. The radical changes being developed will not affect the current usage model - projects related to Ubuntu Core 18 and 20 will continue to use the old monolithic Snapcraft, and the new modular Snapcraft will begin to be used starting with the Ubuntu Core 22 branch.
The old Snapcraft will be replaced by a new, more compact and modular version that will simplify the creation of snap packages for developers and eliminate the difficulties associated with creating portable packages suitable for working across different distributions. The basis for the new Snapcraft is the Craft Parts mechanism, which allows, when assembling packages, to receive data from different sources, process it in different ways and form a hierarchy of directories in the file system, suitable for deploying packages. Craft Parts involves the use of portable components in a project that can be independently loaded, assembled and installed.
The choice of a new or old Snapcraft implementation will be carried out through a special fallback mechanism integrated into the assembly process. This way, existing projects will be able to build snap packages without modification and will only require modification when transferring the packages to a new version of the Ubuntu Core system.
Source: opennet.ru