SnapcraftUpdates

Revision 1 as of 2016-05-12 21:59:30

Clear message

This document describes the policy for updating the snapcraft package in a stable supported distro, including LTS.

snapcraft is the tool to create snaps. This package needs to be kept in sync with snapd releases so we can build the snaps that will work with newer versions of the ubuntu-core snap. snapd already has an exception to release new versions in the stable distro; therefore in addition to critical bug fixes, new features and small improvements are allowed in an snapcraft update as long as the conditions outlined below are met.

QA Process

This is the mandatory QA process that the proposed packages have to pass. The following requirements must be met:

  • each change must be reviewed and approved by at least one ubuntu-core developer before landing into the master branch.
  • each change must be fully tested at the unit level.
  • each change affecting the user interface or file format must have an automated integration test.
  • each new feature must have an example that can be build, installed and executed as a snap.
  • all the unit, integration and examples tests must pass in all the supported architectures. They are executed for one arch before the change is merged into master, and for all the architectures during the build of the deb package that will go into proposed in the case of the unit tests, and during the autopkgtest execution in the case of integration and examples tests.
  • each bug fix that affects the user interface must have one QA review. The QA engineer will verify that the bug is fixed in a system with the proposed package installed by executing an automated or manual test.
  • all the bugs reported in launchpad that will be fixed in this release must have a link to the pull request that fixes them. These bugs must be marked as "Committed" once that pull request is merged into master.
  • when a new version is ready to be proposed, the QA team will perform extensive exploratory testing on the areas that will be changed by the release.

Packaging QA

The resulting package, with all the changes in place, must undergo and pass the following additional QA procedures:

  • upgrade test from previous version of the package. This test must be performed with:
    • apt install/upgrade.
  • test interaction with the snapd installed in the system:
    • build a snap with the new snapcraft package and install it with the existing snapd package.

The above tests can be performed by any QA engineer.

This is a package new in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Once we have another stable Ubuntu version released this should be added to the above process:

  • upgrade test from previous distribution to the current one. If the current distribution is an LTS one, the upgrade path from the previous LTS distro must also be exercised.

Requesting the SRU

The SRU should be requested as usual (StableReleaseUpdates) with the additional note about having the above steps being completed.