Hello all,

In the absence of any reports of problems with the current LDC snap package, I've released it to the stable release channel.  This means that it should now be possible to install it with the command:

    sudo snap install --classic ldc2

where the --classic flag is necessary in order to grant the access permissions the snap package needs to do its work.

Existing users wishing to ensure they will use this stable package release should refresh their installation:

    sudo snap refresh --classic --stable ldc2

The package provides LDC 1.1.1 (based on the DMD 2.071.2 frontend) and uses LLVM 3.9.1 as the backend.  It is expected to work on any distribution with a sufficiently up-to-date snapd package.  In practice this means at least:

  * Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 16.10 and 17.04

  * Debian Testing and Unstable

  * OpenSUSE Leap 42.2


-- Known issues ---

The package is not expected to work on Arch Linux for the time being due to some issues with the snapd package currently available.

Link-time optimization (i.e. the -flto flag) is expected to work only on Ubuntu 16.04, 16.10 and 17.04.  Since this is in any case an experimental feature, this partial support has been tolerated for the current release.


-- Upcoming development releases ---

With a stable package now available, the `edge` and `beta` release channels will soon be used to make releases related to the upcoming 1.2.0 release.  Some planned updates include:

  * supporting architectures other than amd64

  * upgrading LLVM to 4.0

The `edge` channel will publish every individual update to the development branch of the package.  Development packages will be upgraded to the `beta` channel once they have been shown to work on multiple distributions.  Once LDC 1.2.0 is officially released, the package will move towards the `candidate` and `stable` channels once more.

You can check which release channel your current install is tracking using the command

    snap info ldc2

... and looking at the `tracking:` field.  You can switch which channel you are tracking by using the `snap refresh` command (see the beginning of this post) and choosing the channel using the corresponding flag: --stable, --candidate, --beta or --edge (in increasing order of instability:-)

For more information on snap package release channels, see: https://snapcraft.io/docs/reference/channels

Hope this package proves useful to people!

Best wishes,

    -- Joe

On Wednesday, 5 April 2017 at 20:27:02 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> The package provides LDC 1.1.1 (based on the DMD 2.071.2 frontend) and uses LLVM 3.9.1 as the backend.  It is expected to work on any distribution with a sufficiently up-to-date snapd package.  In practice this means at least:
>
>   * Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 16.10 and 17.04
>
>   * Debian Testing and Unstable
>
>   * OpenSUSE Leap 42.2

More detailed installation instructions for different distros are available here:
https://snapcraft.io/docs/core/install