Snappy (package manager)

Snappy is a software deployment and package management system originally designed and built by Canonical for the Ubuntu phone operating system. The packages, called 'snaps' and the tool for using them 'snapd', work across a range of Linux distributions and allow therefore distro-agnostic upstream software deployment. The system is designed to work for phone, cloud, internet of things and desktop computing.

"Snap" application packages of software are self-contained and work across a range of Linux distributions. This is unlike traditional Linux package management approaches, like APT or RPM, which require specifically adapted packages for each Linux distribution. This adds delay between application development and its deployment for end-users.

Snaps themselves have no dependency on any "app store", can be obtained from any source and can be therefore used for upstream software deployment. When snaps are deployed on Ubuntu and other versions of Linux, the Ubuntu app store is used as default back-end, but other stores can be enabled as well.

Developers can use snaps to create command line tools and background services as well as desktop applications. With snap application, upgrades via atomic operation or by deltas are possible.

In June 2016, snapd was ported to a wide range of Linux distributions to enable snaps to be used across any Linux distribution, not just the all-snap Ubuntu Core. snapd is also available or in progress for Arch Linux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo Linux, OpenWrt, openSUSE and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Each distribution is able to interpret the snap metadata to implement the security or other expectations of the snap in a distribution-specific fashion.