Hello!
IPFS is a free distributed file system that has served for the past few months to test our end-to-end workflows, from writing the snapcraft.yaml to continuous delivery to the users. But it also has been an useful experiment for the new role of the Ubuntu community, now that the software will be delivered directly from upstream, with no maintainers and no launchpad in the middle. I wrote a little about this here:
The latest version of IPFS, v0.4.8, is now in the candidate channel. And it can use some testing, so when it’s moved to the stable channel and auto-updated on the machines of all the users, they get a polished and flawless experience.
Here’s how to test the release:
Install the stable version:
$ sudo snap install ipfs
Run the smoke tests.
Stop the daemon.
Refresh to the new version:
$ sudo snap refresh ipfs --candidate
Run the smoke tests again.
For newcomers, this is a nice way to start learning about snaps and snapcraft, and about IPFS and distributed systems.
To get high-quality snaps, just like with debs, we need help from the community to run tests, make translations, write docs, fix bugs. It’s just the packaging where things are so easy now that once the simple yaml file is done, it’s not likely that we will have to look at it a second time. We now have many snaps in the store that would be happy to get more hands. If you want to help, let me know.
