Ubuntu is everywhere. You heard it right?!
Here is the simple breakdown about the various applications packaging services:
Rocks and Rockcraft:
Rocks: Think of Rocks as a new generation of secure, minimal, and OCI-compliant container images built on Ubuntu. They are designed to be lean and specific. They contain only what is necessary for an application to run, which reduces the attack surface and improves efficiency.
Rockcraft: This is the tool used to build Rocks. It automates the process of creating these container images, handling many complex steps. This lets developers focus on defining the content of the application. It makes building production-grade container images easier for everyone.
Snaps and Snapcraft:
Snaps: These are self-contained software packages that work across many different Linux distributions. Imagine an app package that includes the application and all its dependencies, so it just works out of the box, no matter what Linux version you’re using. They run in a secure, isolated environment, a sandbox.
Snapcraft: This is the tool for developers to create Snap packages. It helps you bundle your application and its dependencies into a single .snap file, making it easy to distribute to users.
Charms and Charmcraft:
Charms: These are essentially operators or automation scripts that hold the operational knowledge for deploying, configuring, scaling, and integrating applications. Think of them as the brains that know how to run and manage a specific piece of software, like a database or a web server, on various infrastructures like Kubernetes, VMs, or bare metal. They go beyond just installation; they manage the entire lifecycle.
Charmcraft: This is the tool used to build Charms. It provides the framework and utilities for developers to write these operational automation scripts. This allows them to define how an application should be managed clearly.
Juju:
Juju is an open-source orchestration engine that uses Charms to deploy, integrate, and manage applications at any scale across different infrastructures like public clouds, private clouds, Kubernetes, VMs, or bare metal. It acts as a modeling tool. You can define complex application setups, such as a web application connected to a database and a load balancer, and deploy and manage them easily. Juju leverages Charms to automate the entire lifecycle of these applications and their interactions.
Container Build Service:
Canonical’s Container Build Service is a commercial offering where Canonical builds, tests, and maintains custom container images for enterprises. If you need specific open-source software containerized and want long-term support, including security updates, dependency management, and ongoing maintenance, Canonical’s service will handle it for you. It allows businesses to obtain secure, optimized, and fully supported container images without managing the build and maintenance process themselves.