Store docs and snap channels

store
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  1. How can one request updates to snapcraft docs/pages for a snap? To add notes on a new version of the snap that’s published.

  2. Is there a limit to the number of tracks that can requested for a snap.

  3. Can tracks be set up in advance but not published? Say I release version 1 of my snap to the latest track but also want to create a track for version 1 (but keep this unpublished - users won’t see this). When I publish version 2 to latest, I want also publish version 1 track (make the existing track visible). I want to avoid the effort of creating a new track every time I’m about to push a new release to latest.

  4. How do customers get impacted if a track is deleted? Do their snap start tracking latest or do they have to explicitly switch tracks. Will their snaps break if they can’t find the specified track?

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There are of course technical limitations, since tracks are stored in a database with non-infinite storage. In practical terms however, not really, as long as your track requests make sense and are not too frequent (too-frequent tracks point to possibly tracks not being the right mechanism to use).

This is possible but in general we discourage having empty tracks “just in case” or in waiting. In your scenario, you could request your version 1 track when you start getting ready to publish version 2 (for example once you push version 2 to latest/edge might be a good time ;).

Your first track request takes up to a week to get reviewed/approved but subsequent ones are faster as long as they are consistent with the first one.

Track fallback behavior is precisely why I try to make it very clear to developers how tracks behave. (I suggest reading this). This question has 3 parts:

  1. Tracks can NOT be deleted. What you can do is unpublish all the revisions from a track (from all risks: stable, candidate, beta and edge). This will render the track unfindable and nobody will be able to install from it.

  2. There is no auto-fallback behavior with tracks. Once users choose a track, they will stay on that track even if it’s closed per above.In that case they will stop getting updates entirely. They would have to switch tracks manually to an active one to start getting updates again. So when you open a track and allow users to “stay behind” on an older version of your software, you’re taking on a certain commitment to at least provide security updates, and/or find a way to communicate to your users when a track is becoming obsolete so they can move off it.

  3. Installed snaps will not break if the track is gone, they will simply stop getting updates.

  • Daniel