Snaps without latest/stable releases

I’m working with @rvagg on the node snap in the store. We want to celebrate that the snap exists, and promote it via the usual ways. This would typically include having it featured in snap find & GNOME Software and creating social and blog posts linking to the store page https://snapcraft.io/node .

For node, this won’t work as we currently have things setup. The store page, snap find and GNOME Software only surfaces snaps which are in the latest/stable channel. Users can of course snap install node --channel 8/stable --classic to get it, and ours and upstream docs will of course specify that.

The node developers are pushing the node snap to multiple tracks, but not pushing to the latest/stable channel. The concern here is that major ABI changes would break for developers using node, or break addon compatibility.

This feels like something epoch would help with, but what do we do right now?

How can we balance the ease of installation / exposure of the node snap in the store while ensuring a smooth update process for developers?

For reference, this is what the snap looks like today (on amd64).

$ snap info node
name:      node
summary:   Node.js
publisher: nodesource
contact:   https://github.com/nodesource/distributions
license:   unknown
description: |
  A JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. Node.js uses an
  event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient.
  Node.js' package ecosystem, npm, is the largest ecosystem of open source
  libraries in the world. https://nodejs.org/
snap-id: MEd4V4HHFkCXBSz6UzVmKF2D2PmWcVwR
commands:
  - node
  - node.npm
  - node.yarn
tracking:      8/stable
installed:     8.9.4 (133) 16MB classic
refreshed:     2018-03-01 02:10:18 +0000 UTC
channels:                                           
  stable:      –                                         
  candidate:   –                                         
  beta:        –                                         
  edge:        10.0.0-nightly201802283f78d3fc (151) 17MB classic
  6/stable:    6.13.0                         (138) 13MB classic
  6/candidate: ↑                                         
  6/beta:      ↑                                         
  6/edge:      ↑                                         
  8/stable:    8.9.4                          (133) 16MB classic
  8/candidate: ↑                                         
  8/beta:      ↑                                         
  8/edge:      ↑                                         
  9/stable:    9.6.1                          (142) 16MB classic
  9/candidate: ↑                                         
  9/beta:      ↑                                         
  9/edge:      ↑    

This part of the problem will be solved by Showing edge and beta in search results