Images changes ahead

[Michael Vogt]

On Fri, Jan 08, 2016 at 10:02:09PM +0100, Michael Vogt wrote:
> just a quick heads-up about the 16.04 rolling image. We plan to move
> exclusively to the all-snaps images soon. This means that the existing
> installed 16.04 system-image based installs will soon stop
> updating. There is currently no transition so you will have to reflash.
> 
> As part of this change we will also rename some directories. It will
> be /snaps, /var/lib/snaps and /home/*/snaps in the new images. Plus
> the environment variables will be cleaned up, the details for the new
> names will follow once that change has landed.
[..]

I got some questions so here are some clarifications:
- the existing 16.04 images will continue to work
- we won't break your work
- nothing changes from the applications POV if your snap works on the
  existing 16.04 system-image images it will work on the 16.04
  all-snap images
- the existing 16.04 images will stop updating though, i.e. you will
  need to create a new image at some point

So if you are in the middle of some important work you can just
continue with the existing images and transition once that work is
done.

The next steps are:
- We stop image imports for 16.04 in the system-image server.
  So no more updates and no new snappy that contains changes
  that would break those systems.
- We merge the branch that uses /snaps instead of /apps
  (would break existing images)
- We merge the branch that removes the system-image support
  (would break existing images)
- We merge the branch that removes support for a/b partitions
  (would break existing images)
- Create a all-snaps image with this snappy version
- Publish the new images, announce here
- We merge all-snap support into ubuntu-device-flash on 16.04.
  this will mean that 16.04 can not create 15.04 snappy images
  anymore

If there is anything unclear, please let me know.


Cheers,
 Michael