4.2

The team behind Snapcraft is pleased to announce the release of Snapcraft 4.2.

Special thanks to the contributors that made this release happen: @GamePad64, @Saviq, @cjp256, @igorljubuncic and @sergiusens

New Features

ROS 2 Extension and colcon v2 plugin with base core20

This allows you to target ROS 2 Foxy Fitzroy which is the latest ROS 2 LTS
that runs on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa).

This feature allows building ROS2 applications with a snapcraft.yaml as simple as:

name: ros2-talker-listener
version: '0.1'
summary: ROS2 Talker/Listener Example
description: |
  This example launches a ROS2 talker and listener.

grade: devel
confinement: strict
base: core20

parts:
  ros-demos:
    plugin: colcon
    source: https://github.com/ros2/demos.git
    source-branch: foxy
    source-subdir: demo_nodes_cpp
    build-packages: [make, gcc, g++]
    stage-packages: [ros-foxy-ros2launch]

apps:
  ros2-talker-listener:
    command: opt/ros/foxy/bin/ros2 launch demo_nodes_cpp talker_listener.launch.py
    plugs: [network, network-bind]
    extensions: [ros2-foxy]

A nice walkthrough on how to work with the plugin and extension can be found on https://snapcraft.io/blog/how-to-build-a-snap-using-ros-2-foxy

Ninja generator support when using cmake with base core20

The default generator is set to create Makefiles when using the cmake plugin on core20. A new plugin property has now been introduced to allow for setting that to ninjas. To do so as an example a part can be configured to look like

  hello:
    source: .
    plugin: cmake
    cmake-parameters:
      - -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
    cmake-generator: Ninja

Listing Snap Channel Tracks from Snapcraft

A long missing feature in Snapcraft since the introduction of Channel Tracks and the possibility
to have a default one was to view the available Tracks created for a given snap.

There is now a new command available to retrieve such information, snapcraft list-tracks that
has an alias for convenience and can be called with snapcraft tracks.

The list will show the list of tracks together with their state:

• default (implicit active)
• active
• hidden
• closed

And their creation date together with their assigned Version Pattern (version string required in a given
Snap Revision to be able to release to a given Track).

Bug Fixes

• meta: detailed warnings for resolution of commands @cjp256 (#3219)
• file utils: introduce get_host_tool_path() to find commands on host @cjp256 (#3244)
• plugins v2: use repo.Repo not repo.Ubuntu in colcon @cjp256 (#3257)
• remote-build: use requests.get() instead of urlopen() @cjp256 (#3255)
• spread tests: fix classic patchelf linker regex to match all arches @cjp256 (#3247)
• tests: restrict colcon / ros2-foxy test to amd64 & arm64 @cjp256 (#3254)
• extensions: prepend the snapd glvnd path @Saviq (#3253)
• build providers: honour http proxy settings for snapd @cjp256 (#3251)
• snapcraft: use system certificates by default for https requests @cjp256 (#3252)

Specifications and Documentation

• Tiny typo fix @igorljubuncic (#3249)
• experimental ros2 extension & colcon v2 plugin @cjp256 (#3203)