Confusing error message on expired macaroon
Metadata
Current evaluation
Expired macaroon yields misleading store errors (macaroon-permission-required / macaroon-authorization-required). Triaged bug; maintainer proposed a client-side expiry check; confirmed reproduced but still unfixed.
Suggested action: keep open
Reason: The issue is a valid, maintainer-acknowledged UX bug: sergiusens (a maintainer) triaged it and proposed a concrete approach ('We can do a client side check for the expiration date to provide a potentially better error message', with the jq/base64 snippet for decoding the `.v` field), and AliyevH independently reproduced it with a 2-minute expiry. There is no evidence of a resolving commit or PR in craft-store, and the related launchpad bug snapcraft#1834469 explicitly notes craft-store#97 is still open, so it should remain open. Impact is moderate — the upload/login still fails, but only the message is misleading (no data loss), and it wastes significant user time across the craft toolchain; confidence is capped slightly below 90 because repository source was not inspectable in this round (tooling returned 'No pinned SHA available'), so I could not confirm the current login/credential-store code lacks an expiry check.
Evaluated by: mr-cal-bot
Issue body
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha |
Impact:
42
Quick Win:
18
Complexity:
40
Confidence:
78
Actionability:
70
|
keep open | Expired macaroon yields misleading store errors (macaroon-permission-required / macaroon-authorization-required). Triaged bug; maintainer proposed a client-side expiry check; confirmed reproduced but still unfixed. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Impact:
30
Quick Win:
13
Complexity:
40
Confidence:
70
Actionability:
70
|
keep open | Improve error messages when macaroon expires. Maintainer suggested client-side expiration check. Status: Triaged, open, no fix yet. | |
| qwen/qwen3.8-27b |
Impact:
35
Quick Win:
21
Staleness:
65
Complexity:
40
Confidence:
70
Support Request:
10
|
keep open | craft-store shows a confusing 'macaroon-permission-required' error when store credentials expire instead of telling users to re-login. Triaged by a maintainer with a Jira ticket (CRAFT-3385), but no code work; last activity ~11 months ago. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
60
Complexity:
25
Confidence:
85
Support Request:
10
|
keep open | Improving error messaging for expired store credentials. The issue is triaged, acknowledged by a maintainer, and scoped as a bug, but has seen no activity for ~10 months. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
70
Complexity:
25
Confidence:
80
Support Request:
5
|
keep open | Triaged bug reporting a confusing error message when a macaroon expires. Maintainer suggested a client-side check, but no implementation or follow-up in nearly a year. |
Update history
No update history recorded yet.
Related work
-
Related To:
snapcraft (launchpad)#1834469
(confidence 88%)
Open launchpad bug 'error messaging for invalid macaroon could be improved' whose summary explicitly states that expired legacy credentials still produce misleading macaroon errors and that craft-store#97 is open.
-
Related To:
snapcraft (launchpad)#1745264
(confidence 75%)
Closed launchpad bug 'error message for expired macaroon is not helpful' — resolved on the snapcraft side via merged PR #3562 (54781044a), implying partial downstream improvement but no corresponding fix in craft-store.
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1745264 error message for expired macaroon is not helpful | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Expired or invalid macaroon errors were improved in PR #3907, merged as commit 8a854a8de. | |
| #1834469 error messaging for invalid macaroon could be improved | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Expired legacy credentials can still yield a raw macaroon error or block login; newer 401s are actionable, but the legacy path and upstream craft-store report remain unresolved. |