Faster adoption of new signal releases

[q-wertz]

Hello,

it would be nice if the snap stays more up to date to the newest signal release. Currently the latest stable snap version is 5.7.1 (which is was released on june 30), newest official one is 5.12.2 from today.

channels:
  latest/stable:    5.7.1  2021-07-06 (365) 174MB -
  latest/candidate: ↑                             
  latest/beta:      ↑                             
  latest/edge:      5.11.0 2021-07-31 (367) 174MB -
installed:          5.7.1             (365) 174MB -

Is this a process that can be automated or a manual one? If manual is there a way one can contribute?

[merlijn-sebrechts]

The current process is the following:

1. When a new upstream release happens, I need to press the "trigger new build" button on snapcraft.io.
2. When that build is finished; it ends up in the edge channel. This build needs to be tested.
3. When it's tested, I need to manually publish it to the stable channel.

You can definitely help with step 2. Then I need a way to notify you, however. Maybe the best way to do this is using the Forum? Do you have an account on https://forum.snapcraft.io? Then I can ping you there every time there is a new release to help test it.

[q-wertz]

Would be happy to help :+1: I'm already on the snapcraft forum: q-wertz.

Currently I'm on the edge channel, no issues so far with latest/edge: 5.11.0 2021-07-31 (367) 174MB -

[merlijn-sebrechts]

I started this thread on the forum for quick testing: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/testing-signal-desktop-updates/25944

Let's keep this open to see if we can automate more of the process. It would be nice if there was a way to automatically rebuild the snap when a new upstream signal version is released.

[q-wertz]

Thanks a lot :+1: :rocket:

[AlanGriffiths]

It would be nice if there was a way to automatically rebuild the snap when a new upstream signal version is released.

We do something similar in Mir - i.e. rebuild snaps when Mir releases (or a PR is merged to master). Maybe there's something you can reuse:

https://github.com/MirServer/mir/blob/master/.github/workflows/snaps.yml

https://github.com/MirServer/mir/blob/master/tools/process_snaps.py

[Fuseteam]

it appears upstream has released 5.22 now https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/releases/tag/v5.22.0

[mdehollander]

Hereby a ping that there have been several new releases for signal-desktop. The current version is v5.25.1. Can someone give the version of the snap a bump? Thanks!

[Fuseteam]

@mdehollander might be better to leave a reply on https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/testing-signal-desktop-updates/25944/21 something should be done about faster adoption tho like alan griffiths proposed

[q-wertz]

According to the Snapcraft Forum @galgalesh is looking for maintainers for signal-desktop.

Looks like he does not have enough time to keep it maintained and might be in the process of transferring it.

[mdehollander]

I have posted a ping on the forum.

Regarding the autoupdate, here are some links to the bioconda project that has an autobump system with a bot and also uses circleci to build packages:

• Bioconda docs
• Merge requests on github
• Autobump code

A similar process can be maybe used for snap packages? I think it would really help the project if packages are more frequently updated. I often do not find the latest version of a tool as snap and many snaps are not updated or unmaintained. Not a good sign! For the bioconda project the autobump feature together with PRs in Github and CI builds really helped to keep a constant update flow going :) Good thing as well is that updating can be done by the community, and does not depend on a single person but can be performed and merged by anyone in the group.

Are automatic updates something snapcrafters can initiate, or is this something that should happen at the canonical/snap side?

[Fuseteam]

Updates by the community is the whole point of the snapcrafters group fwiw, if you want why not apply to become a maintainer?? It is the packager that pushes the update not canonical think of the snap store like you do the play store

Also also we also got and suggestion for "autobump" here: https://github.com/snapcrafters/signal-desktop/issues/58#issuecomment-895875164

[mdehollander]

Yes, I agree that the snapcrafters is great for this. But manually maintaining things seems to be a bottleneck, if I see how many not updates snaps there are. But this topic goes a bit beyond the signal package I guess, it is more general. Something like Alan proposed or an approach I linked could be helpful to automate things.

I see that if the github repo is updated, the CI is triggered: https://snapcraft.io/build So if there would be a bot, similar to the flathubbot I see now as well, it would be possible to autobump snap packages, or not?

[Fuseteam]

if some of snaps are not as updated as you like, that likely means the maintainer of the snap needs help if you ask me. either way it was already mentioned the maintainer of the signal snap needs help, and a couple of solutions have been proposed. so i guess someone should make a pr implementing one of those proposals

also take a closer look at alan's proposal:

We do something similar in Mir - i.e. rebuild snaps when Mir releases (or a PR is merged to master).

emphasis mine, note that this is not the repo for signal-desktop that is over at https://github.com/signalapp/signal-desktop this is just the packaging repo. ideally we'd have signal adopt the snap format so that they update the package directly just like telegram does, which would resolve this issue once and for all, i'm not sure what the hurdle is for that