Imagecraft 1.1 release notes¶

21 October 2026

Learn about the new features, changes, and fixes introduced in Imagecraft 1.1. For information about the Imagecraft release cycle, see the Release policy and schedule.

Requirements and compatibility¶

To run Imagecraft, a system requires the following minimum hardware and installed software. These requirements apply to local hosts as well as VMs and container hosts.

Minimum hardware requirements¶

AMD64, ARM64, RISC-V (RVA20), PPC64EL, or S390X-capable processor
2GB RAM
10GB available storage space
Internet access for remote software sources and the Snap Store

Platform requirements¶

Platform	Version	Software requirements
GNU/Linux	Popular distributions that ship with systemd and are compatible with snapd	systemd

What’s new¶

Imagecraft 1.1 brings the following features, integrations, and improvements.

LXD build provider¶

By default, Imagecraft 1.1 now builds in LXD containers instead of Multipass virtual machines.

If you previously chose a provider, clear the setting to return to the LXD default:

snap unset imagecraft provider

To build with Multipass by default, run:

snap set imagecraft provider=multipass

You can also select a build provider for individual runs with the CRAFT_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT environment variable.

CRAFT_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT=multipass imagecraft pack

Rootless partition management with FUSE¶

Imagecraft now exposes image partitions with FUSE instead of loop devices. Partitions now show up as regular files instead of block devices, which could affect override scripts that rely on the previous behavior.

Metadata inside generated images¶

Generated images now include an .image/metadata.yaml file in the main volume. This metadata documents the Imagecraft version and the image’s name, architecture, and generation timestamp.

`canonical/craft-actions/imagecraft/pack` GitHub action¶

There is now a dedicated GitHub Action for packing images with Imagecraft. The action installs and configures LXD and Imagecraft, packs the image at the root of the repository, and exposes the packed images, the Imagecraft revision, and the LXD revision as outputs.

Add the action to a workflow with:

- name: Pack an image with Imagecraft
  uses: canonical/craft-actions/imagecraft/pack@v1

For all supported inputs and outputs, see the action’s README.

Minor features¶

Imagecraft 1.1 brings the following minor changes.

Smarter repacking¶

Imagecraft will now skip re-packing the image if the project is unchanged.

Experimental `test` command changes¶

The experimental test command no longer falls back to reading test configuration from spread.yaml when imagecraft-test.yaml is absent. Projects must define their test configuration in imagecraft-test.yaml.

Contributors¶

We would like to express a big thank you to all the people who contributed to this release.

@bepri, @cmatsuoka, @gcomneno, @jahn-junior, @lengau, @medubelko, @mr-cal, @nicolasbock-canonical, @smethnani, @steinbro, @tigarmo, @upils, @vismaytiwari, and @zhijie-yang.