How to get started - quick guide¶

See the Tutorial for a full getting started guide.

Getting started¶

Rockcraft is the tool for building Ubuntu-based and production-grade OCI images, aka rocks!

Rockcraft is distributed as a snap. For packing new rocks, it makes use of “providers” to execute all the steps involved in the rock’s build process. At the moment, the supported providers are LXD and Multipass.

Requirements¶

Before installing the Rockcraft snap, make sure you have the necessary tools and environment to install and run Rockcraft.

First things first, if you are running Ubuntu, Snap is already installed and ready to go:

snap --version

You’ll get something like:

snap    2.57.1
snapd   2.57.1
series  16
ubuntu  22.04
kernel  5.17.0-1016-oem

If this is not the case, then please check https://snapcraft.io/docs/installing-snap-on-ubuntu.

For what concerns providers, LXD is the default one for Rockcraft, so start by checking if it is available:

lxd --version

The output will be something like:

5.5

And that it is enabled:

systemctl status snap.lxd.daemon.service

The output should look like:

● snap.lxd.daemon.service - Service for snap application lxd.daemon
    Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/snap.lxd.daemon.service; static)
    Active: active (running) since Wed 2022-09-07 16:02:29 CEST; 6 days ago
    ...

If LXD is not installed, then run:

snap install lxd

And if LXD is not running, try starting it via:

lxd init --minimal  # drop the --minimal for an interactive configuration

May you find any problems with LXD, please check https://ubuntu.com/lxd.

Choose a Rockcraft release¶

Pick a Rockcraft release, either from the snap store or via snap search rockcraft.

Keep in mind the chosen channel, as riskier releases are more prone to breaking changes.

Also, note that the Rockcraft’s snap confinement is set to “classic” (this is important for the installation step).

Installation steps¶

Having chosen a Rockcraft release, you must now install it via the snap CLI (or directly via the Ubuntu Desktop store):

sudo snap install rockcraft --channel=<chosen channel> --classic

For example:

sudo snap install rockcraft --classic

Testing Rockcraft¶

Once installed, you can make sure that Rockcraft is actually present in the system and ready to be used:

rockcraft --version

The output will be similar to:

rockcraft 0.0.1.dev1