classic mode (v1)

[Mark Shuttleworth]

I think we discussed that the two environments would inevitably drift
(classic falls behind if you are not doing apt-get update in there).

We also discussed that you might have a "reset" command, which gives you
a fresh (and entirely up to date) classic dimension. Something like
classic.reset.

I don't think we want to use an overlay-on-snap-content because, as you
say, problems. Rather we want to *construct* the classic environment as
efficiently as possible, but treat it as a one-time exercise until the
reset.

For now, we want the classic environment to persist between shell
invocations (so you can make it comfortable and reuse it). We don't
worry about things like daemons starting in the background, all
processes from the classic dimension can terminate when you exit the
classic shell.

Mark

On 23/11/15 16:48, Michael Vogt wrote:
> It seems like we have the following options:
>
> 1) Once ubuntu-classic is installed the snap can never be updated, but
>    the *content* of the snap can be updated, i.e. you can keep your
>    classic environment up-to-date via "sudo apt full-upgrade" (or we
>    could even do it automatically via unattended-upgrades).
>    Feels like a real ubuntu system, but also feels strange that a snap
>    can not be updated. Workaround would be snappy remove
>    ubuntu-classic snappy purge ubuntu-classic and snappy install
>    ubuntu-classic to get a new version of the snap itself.
>
> 2) All system level changes (like additionally installed packages in
>    ubuntu-classic) are lost on each snap update. To make this less of
>    an issue we could add meta-data to the snap that stops automatic
>    updates and on a manual update we could warn the user that the
>    upgrade would mean that the customizations need to be re-done.
>    Upside is that it feels much more naturally. Downside is that some
>    customization like installing a complex build environment can be
>    expensive and not even automated (i.e. people might have copied
>    build binaries in there by hand).
>
> 3) All system level changes are not persistent and you get a fresh
>    overlay each time snappy shell ubuntu-classic is run.
>
> What do you think is the best approach here? Or do I miss something we
> could also do?
>