We’re also excited about the store providing a level of trust, since apps that require certain elevated permissions are reviewed prior to publishing. In the future, we hope to see more people discover the app organically through Snapcraft. Right now, most Linux users find Mailspring via blogs or articles and then we direct them to snapcraft.io/mailspring. We hope the store will become a discovery mechanism for software on Linux. If so, how do you see the store changing the way users find and install your software? The Canonical team pointed me to a wiki page on how to add Snapcraft to that process and actually helped me over the phone to get it done in half an hour or so. We were already using Travis to do automated builds. From a security standpoint, this is probably a good thing, but it did require changes to the app.įrom an integration perspective, it was very easy to do. Within the AppArmor sandbox, we can show instructions but we can’t alter your configuration ourselves. For example, outside the sandbox, the app can automatically make itself the default email client if you ask. We had to audit our code for things that wouldn’t work in the sandbox, and ensure the plugs provided us with everything we needed. We wanted to use the sandbox containment for the security benefits so getting the app packaged was a little challenging. ![]() How does building snaps compare to other forms of packaging you produce? How easy was it to integrate with your existing infrastructure and process? While we could do this with Flatpak or AppImage as well, combining it with automatic updates makes a really clean solution. We were always a bit wary of this, and Snapcraft allows us provide these users with a direct, trusted installation method. Previously we offered deb and rpm packages on our download page, but people would take those and repackage them for smaller distros like ArchLinux without our involvement. We ship updates to Mailspring weekly, and re-downloading the app gets old fast. to deliver updates, and we’d just ignore the smaller distros. Previously, we’d need to run a package repository for Fedora, an apt repository for Ubuntu, etc. As far as I know, Snapcraft is the only solution that provides this across different Linux distros. Automatic updates, as mentioned, was a big one. What was the appeal of snaps that made you decide to invest in them? We immediately started working on the snap once we heard about the benefits. ![]() It contributes to our support load quite a bit, since it takes time to classify bugs and write replies. Without an update system, we frequently get bug reports from Linux users who are many releases behind, running up against problems we’ve already fixed. ![]() Since we started shipping software on Linux in 2014, we’ve always been looking for a way to deliver automatic updates. The Canonical team reached out to me initially and I was intrigued. Install from Ubuntu Store How did you find out about snaps? A long-time macOS developer who only learned about Snapcraft this autumn, Ben explains in our interview why he sees Snapcraft as a step forward on Linux and prioritised shipping a snap in a matter of weeks. Mailspring works with all IMAP email providers, and aims to take the best features from modern clients and deliver them across all platforms. A pro version can be purchased within the app, mainly aimed at sales and business users who do large amounts of outbound email and benefit from features like link tracking and read receipts. Mailspring is free to use and brings a polished Mailbox-style UI to Linux along with modern features like unified inbox, threaded conversations and Gmail label support.
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