Currently releases are pushed directly to a fleet. We would like to implement apps on fleets, so releases are then pushed to apps which are then installed onto fleets.
Current behaviour: Releases > fleets
Future behaviour: Releases > apps > fleets
This is a highly needed feature it would make deploying new fleets with exact same versions much easier.
Kyle Harding: We are working through the backend changes to support this feature and we are excited for the possibilities it will open up, including multi-arch applications to support your mixed device-type fleets!
Ryan H: Correct me if I’m wrong folks, but would this feature unlock the ability to pin balenaOS versions?
Kyle Harding: > but would this feature unlock the ability to pin balenaOS versions?
No, though it might be seen as a prerequisite of sorts.
Internally we have been referring to that as “target state v3” for lack of a better name, which would include the Supervisor and hostapp in the target state along with the user applications.
Any ETA on this? As our device fleet grows (~200 devices at the moment), we currently need deploy the same app to many fleets just to be able to change device configuration (environment variables) at scale. Quite wasteful (multiple app builds instead of a single one) and makes our deployments flaky.
Rahul: Unfortunately, we do not have an ETA yet. This feature depends on the backend changes Kyle mentioned above, which are still actively pushing. We also need to finalise the UX for the feature( which is a huge task in itself) because there will be numerous workflow changes.
Thank you Rahul for the transparency, I appreciate it! Won’t hold my breath on this one then 
Laura (balena) set the status to No Status
To give an update on this, we’re moving this project back to open because it’s further into the future than we had originally thought. This is a huge piece of work and there are many smaller changes we can make in the interim that we hope will have huge lifts for our users and the platform. This is still very much something we want to achieve, but for transparency it’s not currently being worked on.