this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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Oh! I forgot another one! Updates.
You can't really control when the updates of snaps are rolled out.
For "regular" software, I have an "apt update" type of script that I can run when I choose to update everything on my system. On some systems, I have this in a weekly crontab. On other systems, there is no scheduled run. On those systems, it's important to keep many apps as-is - so several packages are also locked, as well ("apt-mark hold").
With snap, you basically have no control. It updates as many times as it wants, when it wants. You can try to adjust some timers to change the window when forced updates are rolled out, but can never tell it to NOT update something. Broken package updated? Well, you can manually roll back that one. Broken update pushed again during the next forced update window? Just roll it back again! (and repeat, every day)
These are the words direct from a snap developer on why you cannot lock an app: "You need to keep your software up to date."
Yes, I understand that, but I also know it's really important to not update some stuff, and I know that broken snaps sometimes get pushed.
Basically, the snap developers have talked down to the users. THEY know better of what WE actually want and need, not us dumb users that actually administer things for a living.
This is incorrect:
snap refresh --hold=forever
In general, I'd advise you to do a bit of research beforehand when giving advice...
Edit: Downvotes for factual information? Really?
The
--holdfeature was introduced with snapd v2.58 which was released as recently as Dec 1, so less than 9 months ago. So I would consider this a relatively new feature.Furthermore, as best as I can tell from the documentation, there isn't even a way to configurably hold updates in general or for a specific package like can be done with apt-preferences;
refresh.holdonly allows 90 days out.I think it is a perfectly valid criticism that the snap developers didn't implement this feature at all until well into the life of the product and then, even then, done begrudgingly at best evidenced by the minimal implementation.
Now, I feel like I did my research, but feel free to let me know if there's something I can do better or if you have any other general life advice for me.