Hi,
I think the ubuntu snap is great idea.
However the fact that it may contain duplications has two disadvantages.
1) eating more space in the storage.
2) eating more space in the internal memory (RAM), it will load the same library more than once to the memory.
Now the solution for this is simple.
We can have one directory that is called the repository, and it will contain all the libraries and binaries of all the snap packages.
The name of the file in this repositories will be the sha-256 of their content, so only if the two files are identical, they will override each other, but in this case it won't matter because they are the same.
The snap package itself will contain hard link to the libraries and binaries that it is using from the repositories.
So if two different snap package will use exactly the same version of Java/python (etc etc..), it will be stored only once, and will be load only once.
We can also count the number of hard link for every file in central repositories, and if it only one, then it mean that no snap repositories is any more using this binaries, and it can be deleted.
This way all snap package are isolated, but we have no duplication.
Now I say nothing new here, other said it already, I am just repeating what they have said.
What I don't understand is they are not implementing it ?
I mean it sound like an easy problem to solve.
What is holding back the snap developer from doing it?
Are there any obstacle that I am not aware of ?
can any of the snap developers tell me what prevent them from implementing this?
I mean it sound not very easy , but maybe I am not aware of issues.
So I hope someone can explain to me why this is not implemented?