Maintaining an official snap package in the FreeCAD organization

This subforum is specifically to discuss packaging issues on different platforms (windows, mac, linux), and using different packaging systems (conda, etc...)
User avatar
kinghat
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed Oct 14, 2020 11:39 pm

Re: Maintaining an official snap package in the FreeCAD organization

Post by kinghat »

ppd wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 4:08 pm There's beta left, which could carry weekly promotions from edge. Would that make sense to lower traffic?
that would be really nice addition to the release spectrum imo.
User avatar
ppd
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Feb 26, 2019 12:01 pm
Location: Munich, Germany

Re: Maintaining an official snap package in the FreeCAD organization

Post by ppd »

We're still seeing reasonable growth:
Screenshot from 2022-03-22 14-50-53.png
Screenshot from 2022-03-22 14-50-53.png (72.3 KiB) Viewed 2262 times
There's now a separate beta channel for users who want less frequent updates. It syncs automatically from edge every week.

The edge & beta releases have transitioned away from the ppa's OCCT version and now include an up-to-date 7.6.1. Those changes have also found their way into realthunder's snap.
Try FreeCAD from the Snap Store: Stable releases (in latest/stable) & daily builds (in latest/edge). Supports installing additional python packages via pip!
Image
User avatar
adrianinsaval
Veteran
Posts: 5534
Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2018 5:15 pm

Re: Maintaining an official snap package in the FreeCAD organization

Post by adrianinsaval »

any particular reason why this isn't the official snap? Who has administrative rights for the official account?
User avatar
ppd
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Feb 26, 2019 12:01 pm
Location: Munich, Germany

Re: Maintaining an official snap package in the FreeCAD organization

Post by ppd »

adrianinsaval wrote: Tue Mar 22, 2022 2:39 pm any particular reason why this isn't the official snap? Who has administrative rights for the official account?
Well, there is no official snap per se. There's the freecad snap maintained by vejmarie, which could be considered semi-official.

My initial idea (a long time ago) was to establish a project under https://github.com/FreeCAD and to publish the snap from an official account (not "ppd", not "vejmarie", but e.g. "FreeCAD"). I couldn't make it happen (see the other thread: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=46853), and I think there's not terribly much interest from the project side, but many users are quite happy with my unofficial snap.

My initial use case for a freecad snap has largely ceased to exist, but maintaining it is very cheap, and it's a good exercise in GitHub actions, snapcraft and the like.

Still, I fear the low bus factor of both snaps is a problem that needs to be solved. It should not live in a personal repo. No single person (me included) should control the quasi-official snap.
Try FreeCAD from the Snap Store: Stable releases (in latest/stable) & daily builds (in latest/edge). Supports installing additional python packages via pip!
Image
User avatar
ppd
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Feb 26, 2019 12:01 pm
Location: Munich, Germany

Re: Maintaining an official snap package in the FreeCAD organization

Post by ppd »

Monthly report:

Code: Select all

$ snapcraft metrics freecad-ppd --name weekly_installed_base_by_channel --format table
Channel                     2022-04-25
Beta                        19
Candidate                   2
Edge/paddle-widget-testing  3
Edge                        144
Stable                      388
In total: 556 weekly active devices (+19%); there's still reasonable growth. For comparison: the official SolveSpace snap has roughly six times as many users, so there's obviously a lot of potential. The snap most likely "suffers" from the presence of the unsuffixed freecad snap, which hasn't been updated since 03/2021, but is still the obvious pick at a first glance for most users.

Interesting: We finally got a test branch going (Edge/paddle-widget-testing), which delivers a commit straight from a PR branch to interested users. That's another nice tool which could be leveraged on a larger scale if this snap were to be adopted into the FreeCAD organization.
Try FreeCAD from the Snap Store: Stable releases (in latest/stable) & daily builds (in latest/edge). Supports installing additional python packages via pip!
Image
User avatar
Kunda1
Veteran
Posts: 13434
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2017 9:03 pm

Re: Maintaining an official snap package in the FreeCAD organization

Post by Kunda1 »

Impressive! Love the flexibility of Snap. Thanks for sharing the info. I'm thinking if vejmarie doesn't respond in the next few days, it may be the exact time to deprecate the official FreeCAD snap and make freecad-ppd the official. He hasn't been active/responsive for a while and we're pre-v0.20 release.
Alone you go faster. Together we go farther
Please mark thread [Solved]
Want to contribute back to FC? Checkout:
'good first issues' | Open TODOs and FIXMEs | How to Help FreeCAD | How to report Bugs
User avatar
ppd
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Feb 26, 2019 12:01 pm
Location: Munich, Germany

Re: Maintaining an official snap package in the FreeCAD organization

Post by ppd »

Kunda1 wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 11:19 am it may be the exact time to deprecate the official FreeCAD snap and make freecad-ppd the official
A huge part of a snap's appeal is the name. If someone official from the team would claim the official "freecad" name on the snapcraft platform, the admins would likely transfer it after some vetting. Merely declaring freecad-ppd "official" here on the wiki or forums isn't sufficient, imho; freecad-ppd should be unlisted from the store and reappear as freecad afterwards.

@Kunda1 You probably have sufficient authority to get this process going. You could register a "FreeCAD" account as per https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/create-a-d ... count/6760 and file a name dispute as per https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/registerin ... -name/6793

There's a precedent for the freecad snap: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/freecad-sn ... unity/7636
A similar problem arose in 2018.

In any case: Try to gain control over the snap name and the snap repo. The very same problem could (and probably will at some point) happen to the freecad-ppd snap. Increase the bus factor etc. pp.
Try FreeCAD from the Snap Store: Stable releases (in latest/stable) & daily builds (in latest/edge). Supports installing additional python packages via pip!
Image
User avatar
Kunda1
Veteran
Posts: 13434
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2017 9:03 pm

Re: Maintaining an official snap package in the FreeCAD organization

Post by Kunda1 »

vejmarie wrote: pinged by pinger macro
Help us out so we don't have to jump through hoops ;)
Alone you go faster. Together we go farther
Please mark thread [Solved]
Want to contribute back to FC? Checkout:
'good first issues' | Open TODOs and FIXMEs | How to Help FreeCAD | How to report Bugs
User avatar
Kunda1
Veteran
Posts: 13434
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2017 9:03 pm

Re: Maintaining an official snap package in the FreeCAD organization

Post by Kunda1 »

Heads-up, the decision has been made to adopt freecad-ppd as the official snap package. @ppd's work on the unofficial snap package has opened up the possibilities to not only run nightly 'edge' builds for testing and feedback but also to build experimental snaps from open PRs [1] for users to quickly test. This will be invaluable for FC development moving forward

Acknowledgements
I want to thank @vejmarie the previous official snap maintainer for all the work invested and the maintainership.
I'd like to thank @ppd for stepping up, initiating a lot of work to build an unofficial snap, and subsequently revealing more gems that Snap packages have to offer and aiding FreeCAD development and distribution.

Thank y'all very much!

[1] https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull ... 1119665287
Alone you go faster. Together we go farther
Please mark thread [Solved]
Want to contribute back to FC? Checkout:
'good first issues' | Open TODOs and FIXMEs | How to Help FreeCAD | How to report Bugs
Post Reply