Meta-packages for snaps

[Michael Hall]

On 03/24/2017 07:40 PM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On 25/03/17 00:27, mhall119 wrote:
>> Usually you would include all related tools in the same snap. Is there a
>> need to having them separate if they all need to be installed together?
> 
> Mostly that they don't technically _need_ to all be together.  I mean,
> why not split stuff up if its components can be provided independently,
> allowing the user to pick what bits they want (or not)?
> 
> Maybe I'm hanging on too much to the deb world, but multiple independent
> packages with a meta-package to provide the recommended collection,
> seems like a good pattern in general.  But from your answer, I take it
> that it's not currently possible?
> 

Because your snap is going to pull in all of your dependencies, doing
one snap per tool will likely result in more duplication and thus more
disk space than providing it all as a single package.

If your users are likely to want more than one of these tools, I would
recommend just providing them all in one package. That way it's still
easy for them to install with a single command, and they will have
everything they might want already there.


Michael Hall
mhall119 at ubuntu.com