Contribute to app development

As the developers’ choice of operating systems, Ubuntu provides numerous avenues for creating new software. Developers can pursue traditional Debian package development, build universal and sandboxed Snap/Container applications or even create Juju Charms for container orchestration.

Contact other app developers on the Ubuntu app development mailing list.

Debian packages

The majority of source packages in Ubuntu are copied unmodified from Debian; therefore the best route for getting packages into Ubuntu is through Debian. Not only will this help ensure your application is available to Ubuntu users, but to those using Debian and the many Ubuntu flavors, remixes and derivatives. Discover more about the relationship between Ubuntu and Debian.

Snap applications

Snaps are easy-to-install application packages for desktop, cloud and IoT that are secure, cross‐platform and dependency‐free. Snaps are discoverable and installable from the Snap Store, the app store for Linux with an audience of millions.

Container applications

Rocks are Ubuntu-based container images that meet the security, stability, and reliability requirements of cloud-native software. They are built with Rockcraft and comply with the Open Container Initiative’s (OCI) image format specification, so they can be stored in any OCI-compliant container registry (e.g. DockerHub, ECR, ACR,..) and used by any OCI-compliant tool (e.g. Docker, Podman, Kubernetes,…).

Juju charms

Juju charms are deployment and service orchestration scripts that enable people to deploy services onto Ubuntu clouds on EC2, HP Cloud, and OpenStack (among others). Since Juju charms can be written in any language, it’s a good way for DevOps experts to share deployment and management scripts with the community. Developers can share their charms on Charmhub, a repository of ready-to-use charms.