Testing the future of Juju with snaps

Juju 2.3 is under heavy development, and one thing we all want when we're working on the next big release of our software product is to get feedback from users. Are you solving the problems your user has? Are there bugs in the corner cases that a user can find before the release? Are the performance improvements you made working for everyone like you expect? The more folks that test the software before it's out, the better off your software will be!

With the recent calls for testing out the Cross Model Relations and Storage Improvements coming in Juju 2.3, I think it'd be good to point out how we can leverage the power of channels in snaps to test out the upcoming features in Juju.

To get Juju via snaps, you can search the snap store and install it like so:

$ snap find juju
$ sudo snap install --classic juju

This then drops the Juju binary in the /snap/bin directory.

$ /snap/bin/juju --version
2.2.2-zesty-amd64

That's great that we've got the latest stable version of Juju. Let's see what other versions we can get access to.

Let's try to use the new storage flag on the deploy command that Andrew points out in his blog post.

$ /snap/bin/juju deploy --attach-storage
ERROR flag provided but not defined: --attach-storage

Bummer! That isn't in the stable release of Juju yet. Note that it calls out the flag as not being defined. Let's see if we can get access to a more bleeding edge Juju.

$ snap info juju
name:      juju
summary:   "juju client"
publisher: canonical
contact:   http://jujucharms.com
description: |
  Through the use of charms, juju provides you with shareable, re-usable, and
  repeatable expressions of devops best practices.
commands:
  - juju
tracking:    stable
installed:   2.2.2 (2142) 25MB classic
refreshed:   2017-07-13 16:20:52 -0400 EDT
channels:                                      
  stable:    2.2.2                      (2142) 25MB classic
  candidate: 2.2.2                      (2142) 25MB classic
  beta:      2.2.3+2.2-9909aa4          (2180) 43MB classic
  edge:      2.3-alpha1+develop-1f3f66e (2187) 43MB classic

There we can see that in the edge channel has an upcoming 2.3-alpha release in there. Let's switch to it and test out what's coming in Juju 2.3.

$ sudo snap refresh --edge juju
juju (edge) 2.3-alpha1+develop-1f3f66e from 'canonical' refreshed

$ /snap/bin/juju --version
2.3-alpha1-zesty-amd64

Now let's check out that command Andrew was talking about with the storage feature in Juju 2.3.

$ /snap/bin/juju deploy --attach-storage
ERROR flag needs an argument: --attach-storage

There we go, now we've got access to the upcoming storage features in Juju 2.3 and we can provide great feedback to the dev team.

After we're done testing and providing that feedback we can easily switch back to using the stable release for our normal work.

$ sudo snap refresh --stable juju
juju 2.2.2 from 'canonical' refreshed

Give it a try, check out the latest in the upcoming 2.3 work and file bugs, send feedback, and be ready to leverage the great work being faster.