[snaps/deb] Cross dependencies / forward compatibility between debs & snaps?

[Samuel Cozannet]

Hello,

This may seem a very stupid question (apologies for this) but it just
popped to me as I was working on a .deb.

Background: I am currently working with IBM on some GPU docker based
images, so I have to use docker on ppc64le.

I came across nvidia-docker, which is the tool distributed by nVidia to
abstract the management of GPUs when running docker images.

nVidia does support ppc64le, and provide code to package nvidia-docker as a
deb on this arch, but do not maintain repos so you have to package it
yourself.
The nvidia-docker deb depends on docker-engine, which is not supported by
Docker on ppc64le (and provides the same functionality as docker.io, which
is in our repos). So it didn't build ootb, and I had to update the control
file for the .deb to reference docker.io and I was able to build it.

With the recent flow of emails about the docker snap, I wondered how would
the system have reacted if would I have installed the docker engine via
snap?
I guess it wouldn't have liked it. As the docker snap and docker deb
conflict, this would mean I could not use the snap in this context.

What is our recommendation for maintainers of .deb / .snap to manage
dependencies? Especially, for deb maintainers, what is the best practice
going forward?

(needless to say the answer "just make a snap" doesn't really work her as
the focus is more on managing the transition, but also cover the cases
where the .deb is required for some customers / production workload which
will not necessarily move from the traditional packages over night)

Thx,
Sam

--
Samuel Cozannet
Cloud, Big Data and IoT Strategy Team
Business Development - Cloud and ISV Ecosystem
Changing the Future of Cloud
Ubuntu <http://ubuntu.com>  / Canonical UK LTD <http://canonical.com> / Juju
<https://jujucharms.com>
samuel.cozannet at canonical.com
mob: +33 616 702 389
skype: samnco
Twitter: @SaMnCo_23
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<https://es.linkedin.com/in/scozannet>
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