This is a follow-up to the ROS prototype to production on Ubuntu Core series to answer a question I received: “What if I want to make an image for the factory, but don’t want to make my snaps public?” This question is of course not robotics-specific, and neither is its answer. In this post we’ll cover two ways to do this. Before we start, you’ll need a little bit of an Ubuntu Core imaging background....

As of this writing there are two major versions of Snapcraft: v1 and v2. Snapcraft v1 creates snaps that target Ubuntu Core 15, and Snapcraft v2 creates snaps that target Ubuntu Core 16. Series 16 snaps are much more widely used, being supported not only in Ubuntu Core 16 but also classic Ubuntu Xenial (desktop and server) and more recently even Trusty! It’s also supported across a range of other Linux distributions....

So you’re developing a complex application. Maybe it has some really specific dependencies, or requires a lot of setup. In many cases (such as my own), it’s a web application. I have a suite of tests, varying all the way from unit tests through integration tests. The latter typically uses Selenium, and I often integrate it with Sauce Labs. I’ve written an article about this before. However, even those integration tests aren’t testing the real application: it’s not running against a production database, it’s not running with a production web server, and so on....

We’re getting ready to release a new version of the Nextcloud snap. v11.0.3snap3-rc1 is now in the candidate channel: $ sudo snap install --candidate nextcloud This update includes: An update to MySQL v5.7.18 An update to certbot v0.14.1 We’d love this new version (particularly features that involve those updates) to get some exercise before we release it. Feel like helping? We’ve put together some smoke tests to get you started....

I’m an engineer, and am pretty clueless when it comes to film-making. However, I’ve been asked by a few different people how I made the ROS prototype to production on Ubuntu Core video series. While I’m not deluding myself into thinking I’m a pro, I’m happy with how they turned out, and they were made on a shoestring budget with open-source software. This post is for those who are curious about what I did, what I used, and how I did it....