Let's kill "sideloading"

[Tony Espy]

On 09/01/2016 06:15 PM, Gustavo Niemeyer wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> With assertions finally being put to great use, it's time to kill the
> term "sideloading". That term does a disservice to our conversations,
> because it is vague and also limits the thinking around what is possible.

I have a question related to "sideloading" a snap.

Yesterday while testing a fix for our network-manager snap, I refreshed 
my rpi2 ( running the 'experimental' image ) which resulted in a new 
ubuntu-core snap, which I discovered now enforces the assertion that a 
snap must be signed in order to install, even when side-loaded.  I was 
told on #snappy that I could circumvent this check via the 
--force-dangerous parameter, which worked for me.  I was also told that 
this parameter may just be shortened to "--dangerous", and that 
"--devmode" may cause this to automatically set.

My question is what is the process for getting a snap signed?  Is this 
something that's done automatically when a snap is published to the store?

The snap I was testing was built by launchpad.  Is it possible to sign a 
snap locally ( ie. like debsign )?

Regards,
/tony