Maintain a channel for older versions

[teoincontatto]

Hello,

First of all thank for the effort you put in providing this package to the snap repository. The ease of use to install and upgrade is really awesome and greatly improve the user experience!

I would like to ask for a (I hope) little improvement that would definitely IMHO improve the snap quality.

In some critical scenario, where a developer have to fix critical bugs or have to speed up development due to stakeholder request, she/he want to stick to the Eclipse version currently used. This is due to the fact that features can broke when Eclipse version is updated and that add not affordable time to handle such problems. In such a critical scenario would be very helpful if channel of specific version could be maintained in order to allow users to jump to newer version when not in a rush. Also I saw refactoring feature broken in a newer version of Eclipse and the only solution would be to downgrade to the previous version, that vanished from snap (the working version was 2018-12). The only option here was to install Eclipse using the Eclipse installer that allow to use an older version.

I know another package that maintain such versions channels. You could use that as an example:

$ snap info microk8s
name:      microk8s
summary:   Kubernetes for workstations and appliances
publisher: Canonical✓
contact:   https://github.com/ubuntu/microk8s
license:   Apache-2.0
description: |
  MicroK8s is a small, fast, secure, single node Kubernetes that installs on just about any Linux
  box. Use it for offline development, prototyping, testing, or use it on a VM as a small, cheap,
  reliable k8s for CI/CD. It's also a great k8s for appliances - develop your IoT apps for k8s and
  deploy them to MicroK8s on your boxes.
snap-id: EaXqgt1lyCaxKaQCU349mlodBkDCXRcg
channels:
  stable:         v1.15.2         2019-08-05 (743) 192MB classic
  candidate:      v1.15.3         2019-08-20 (778) 171MB classic
  beta:           v1.15.3         2019-08-20 (778) 171MB classic
  edge:           v1.15.3         2019-08-22 (795) 171MB classic
  1.16/stable:    –                                      
  1.16/candidate: –                                      
  1.16/beta:      v1.16.0-beta.1  2019-08-23 (799) 173MB classic
  1.16/edge:      v1.16.0-alpha.3 2019-08-23 (798) 173MB classic
  1.15/stable:    v1.15.2         2019-08-06 (745) 192MB classic
  1.15/candidate: v1.15.3         2019-08-20 (776) 171MB classic
  1.15/beta:      v1.15.3         2019-08-20 (776) 171MB classic
  1.15/edge:      v1.15.3         2019-08-22 (794) 171MB classic
  1.14/stable:    v1.14.5         2019-08-06 (744) 217MB classic
  1.14/candidate: v1.14.6         2019-08-21 (777) 217MB classic
  1.14/beta:      v1.14.6         2019-08-21 (777) 217MB classic
  1.14/edge:      v1.14.6         2019-08-19 (777) 217MB classic
  1.13/stable:    v1.13.6         2019-06-06 (581) 237MB classic
  1.13/candidate: v1.13.6         2019-05-09 (581) 237MB classic
  1.13/beta:      v1.13.6         2019-05-09 (581) 237MB classic
  1.13/edge:      v1.13.7         2019-06-06 (625) 244MB classic
  1.12/stable:    v1.12.9         2019-06-06 (612) 259MB classic
  1.12/candidate: v1.12.9         2019-06-04 (612) 259MB classic
  1.12/beta:      v1.12.9         2019-06-04 (612) 259MB classic
  1.12/edge:      v1.12.9         2019-05-28 (612) 259MB classic
  1.11/stable:    v1.11.10        2019-05-10 (557) 258MB classic
  1.11/candidate: v1.11.10        2019-05-02 (557) 258MB classic
  1.11/beta:      v1.11.10        2019-05-02 (557) 258MB classic
  1.11/edge:      v1.11.10        2019-05-01 (557) 258MB classic
  1.10/stable:    v1.10.13        2019-04-22 (546) 222MB classic
  1.10/candidate: v1.10.13        2019-04-22 (546) 222MB classic
  1.10/beta:      v1.10.13        2019-04-22 (546) 222MB classic
  1.10/edge:      v1.10.13        2019-04-22 (546) 222MB classic

[laborg]

I agree, it would be nice to have channels for Eclipse as auto-upgrades on IDEs aren't very helpful.

[awesome-manuel]

@popey not sure what we need to change in the snapcraft.yaml to make this work.

[Mailaender]

https://snapcraft.io/docs/channels seem to be created in the admin console.

[ThyMYthOS]

https://snapcraft.io/docs/channels seem to be created in the admin console.

Developers must currently make a request for tracks to be added to their snap via the #store-requests forum category. Releases are verified and checked to ensure that reasonable user expectations are being met. For example, only 3.2.* versions are accepted into a 3.2 track.