Hi everybody,
Currently work on my new book that covers snaps and snappy.
I have created a sketch that shows snappy ecosystem as below.
Does the image describes the snappy ecosystem right? Any missed or wrong component?
Today the Snappy page on Wikipedia redirect user to Snap
Also we do not see snappy links/titles on Ubuntu official pages and more see “Snap” word.
Does the word Snappy is a correct word to refer to the whole ecosystem?
there is a correlated post here for this but it was updated few years ago.
Yeah, we try to use other terms like snaps, snapcraft, snapd etc rather than Snappy. However, people have long memories. We also have a few legacy things kicking around like the #snappy irc channel. But for the most part the name ‘snappy’ is a colloquialism that people use when referring to all this stuff, but we try to avoid it if we can.
Thanks for the reply.
As I understand your mean is that it’s better to call an individual tool by its name when it is possible (say snaps rather than snappy just like we try to say Ubuntu rather that GNU/Linux), but it is ok to say snappy when we refer to the whole ecosystem (all of Snapcraft, snaps, snap store, etc).
Let me know if I misunderstood that.
What’s your opinion about the sketch above? Do you have any suggestions to improve that?
Personally I’d try to avoid using “Snappy” anywhere. Because the more it’s used, especially in print, the more it permeates the industry as the brand we’re using, which we’re not.
Snappy was the predecessor to Ubuntu Core.
When we started with snaps in 2014, we started off a “headless phone” image for IoT. We could not use the already existing “click” packages (usually used on phones) on this setup, they were pretty much exactly what flatpacks are today and were tightly tied to a UI that we did not have.
We had to go a step further with the security models and system integration to run daemons, cli apps, even kernels and bootloaders and the like, so “snappy packages” were created. Initially they were read-only tarballs and managed by a python script called “snappy-daemon” …
In the course towards the Ubuntu Core 16 release (based on 16.04) all this was re-designed. A complete package manager was created (snapd), the package format was re-worked and renamed to “snap”. Ubuntu Core was re-designed to be completely created and run from snap packages (rootfs, kernel, bootloader, they all became snaps) …
Later on in the 16.04 cycle snaps also started supporting desktop apps …
So while many of us older farts have a conservative mind and stick to the “Snappy” name out of nostalgia, “Snappy” was really something completely different and just a step on the way to what snaps and Ubuntu Core are today.
Thank you guys,
I have learned that the term used to refer to the Whole Ecosystem is “Snap” itself. Also, we prefer to refer to individual tools by their correlated name. (Snapcraft, Snapd, snaps for example)
I will change the word snappy and replace it with “Snap” word and will mention to snappy as a side note with the information provider by @ogra
@solat Thanks for the feedback about the diagram. I think it will be more clear for the user to understand the workflow with the change you made. Will use the data you provide inside the diagram.
