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Publishing go-ipfs as a snap

Snap is the default package manager for ubuntu since the release of 20.04. This doc captures what we know about building go-ipfs as a snap package and publishing it to the snapstore.

The go-ipfs snap is defined in snap/snapcraft.yaml. For more detail on our snapcraft.yaml see: https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/ipfs-snap

For go-ipfs we deliberately lean on the Canonical lauchpad.net build environment so as it simplifies creating builds for more architectures, which has been requested by user numerous times.

Linux user can install go-ipfs with:

$ snap install ipfs

Apps installed via Snapcraft are auto-updating by default. Snapcraft uses 'Release Channels' to let the user pick their stability level, with channels for stable, candidate, beta and edge. Snap will install the latest release from the stable channel by default. A user that wants to test out the bleeding edge can opt in by passing the --edge flag

$ snap install --edge ipfs

Dashboard for managaing go-ipfs snap release channels for go-ipfs

Known issues

  • ipfs mount fails as fusermount is not included in the snap, and cannot work from a snap as it is not able to create non-root mounts, see: come-maiz/ipfs-snap#6
ubuntu@primary:~$ ipfs mount
2020-07-10T09:54:17.458+0100	ERROR	node	node/mount_unix.go:91	error mounting: fusermount: exec: "fusermount": executable file not found in $PATH
2020-07-10T09:54:17.463+0100	ERROR	node	node/mount_unix.go:95	error mounting: fusermount: exec: "fusermount": executable file not found in $PATH

Developing

We let launchpad.net build our snap for us, but if you need to edit the snapcraft.yml you can test it locally

Requirements

You need snapcraft installed locally

# ubuntu or similar
$ snap install snapcraft --classic

# macos
$ brew install snapcraft

Build and test

Build out a snap package for go-ipfs by running the following from this project

$ snapcraft

Test the built snap package by installing it on a system that has snapd

$ snap install ipfs_<snap details here>.snap
# then kick the tires
$ ubuntu@primary:~$ ipfs daemon
Initializing daemon...
go-ipfs version: 0.7.0-dev

You can test it out on mac too. By installing and using snapcraft, it'll pull in multipass which is a quick way to run an ubuntu vm, and it has a notion of a primary container, which gets nice things like automounting your home dir in the vm, so you can:

# install your .snap in a multipass vm
$ multipass shell
ubuntu@primary:~$ cd ~/Home/path/to/snap/on/host/filesystem
ubuntu@primary:~$ snap install ipfs_<snap details>.snap --devmode --dangerous
ubuntu@primary:~$ ipfs daemon
Initializing daemon...
go-ipfs version: 0.7.0-dev

Building in Docker

ipfs-shipyard/ipfs-snap includes a Dockerfile that creates an image that can build go-ipfs from source and package it as a snap. It starts with snapcore/snapcraft:stable and adds in go and just enough tools to allow snapcraft to build go-ipfs. It is published to dockerhub as ipfs/ipfs-snap-builder.

$ docker run -v $(pwd):/my-snap ipfs/ipfs-snap-builder:latest sh -c "apt update && cd /my-snap && snapcraft --debug"

Publishing the Snap

The following snap release channels are published automatically:

Git branch Snap channel
release stable
master edge

Edge via snapcraft.io

The snapcraft store watches the default branch of the go-ipfs repo, and updates the snap for the edge channel. This service is configured automatically by snapcraft. It's neat, but it doesn't allow us to watch any branch other than the default.

Screenshot 2020-10-12 at 15 56 07

Stable via launchpad.net

The stable channel is published automatically via launchpad.net. There is a mirror of the go-ipfs repo at https://launchpad.net/go-ipfs that is sync'd with the github repo every few hours (at canonical's leisure).

A snap build configuration called ipfs-stable is set up to watch the release branch on go-ipfs and publish it to the stable snap channel.

The key configuration points are:

# What flavour VM to build on.
Series: infer from snapcraft.yml

Source:
    Git:
        # the launchpad mirror of go-ipfs
        Git repository: ~ipfs/go-ipfs/+git/go-ipfs
        Git branch: refs/heads/release

Automatically build when branch changes: true
    Source snap channels for automatic builds:
        # tell snapcraft what version of snapcraft to use when building.
        # NOTE: At time of writing we use the default `core18` platform for the 
        # go-ipfs snap. If you specify others here, a build error occurs, which 
        # I think is mainly due to a launchpad ux bug here.
        core: ""
        core18: stable
        core20: ""
        snapcraft: stable


Automatically upload to store:
    Registered store package name: ipfs
    Store channels:
        Risk: 
            Stable: true

# What architectures to build for. this selection is chosen to match the auto 
# configured build provided by snapcraft for the edge channel, for neatness, so 
# that all architectures that currently have builds in snap continue to get 
# updates, even though some of them would be tough for use to test on.
Processors:
    amd64: true
    # raspi 4
    arm64: true
    # older raspi
    armhf: true
    # sure ok i guess.
    i386: true
    # hmmm... PowerPC!?
    ppc64el: true
    # wat. IBM system Z mainframes!?
    s390x: true

Screenshot_2020-10-12 Edit ipfs-stable Snap packages “IPFS Maintainers” team

Future work - Publish RCs to the candidate channel

If we wish to publish release candidates to the snap store, we can do that by creating a new snap build config

  1. Find the release-vX.X branch in the lauchpad.net mirror of the go-ipfs repo.
  2. Click "Create snap package"
  3. Fill out the form using the same values as listed above for the stable channel, but:
    • Set Name to ipfs-candidate (this just needs to be a unique name to identify this config)
    • For Risk select only Candidate (so the snap is published to the Candidate channel.)

You can trigger a build manually to kick things off. Subsequent changes to that branch will be published as a snap automatically when when the mirror next syncs with github (every 6-12hrs)

Who can edit this?

The ipfs snapcraft.io listing can be edited by

  • @elopio TBC, the original submitter, need to check about getting ownership transferred.
  • @lidel
  • @olizilla

You need a Canonical developer account, then ask an existing owner to add you. Access is managed here https://dashboard.snapcraft.io/snaps/ipfs/collaboration/

The launchpad.net config is managed by IPFS Maintainers team, and you can request to join that team with your Canonical developer account. The list of maintainers is here: https://launchpad.net/~ipfs/+members

At the time of writing the launchpad maintainers are:

  • @lidel
  • @olizilla

References