Canonical today released the Snapcraft 2.9 update of the tool used for creating Snappy package (also known as Snaps) for the Snappy Ubuntu Core, Ubuntu Desktop, and Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS operating systems.

Snapcraft 2.9 is an important milestone because it's the first release since the launch of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) on April 21, 2016, bringing brand-new features like support for the "confinement" YAML property, allowing users to choose if their Snap package should be installed with the devmode option in confined mode or functional.

Snappy packagers should be aware that Snapcraft's new "confinement" YAML property is designed to work with Snaps still under development. "Snaps need to be able to specify if they require devmode or if they can be run confined. This will allow for snapd to provide reasonable errors if one tries to install a snap that cannot run successfully under confinement," reads the feature request submitted on Launchpad.

Additionally, Snapcraft 2.9 implements support for "epoch" YAML property, which promises to let Snaps perform step upgrades by specifying upgrade paths. Again, please note that the "epoch" property is still under development. Lastly, the Snapcraft 2.9 release implements Bash completion for the snapcraft commands, because, after all, Snapcraft is a command-line tool.

As noted above, Snapcraft 2.9 is now available in the main software repositories of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, which means that if you want to install it, you can do it right now by launching the Ubuntu Software graphical package or the APT command-line utility and do a full system upgrade.

However, if you plan on installing Snapcraft 2.9 on your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS operating system for the first time, please open the Terminal app and execute the commands listed below. Alternatively, you can use the Ubuntu Software graphical package manager to install the latest Snapcraft release and corresponding example package. Snapcraft makes creating Snap packages a breeze.