Consecutive runs of rockcraft pack fail
Metadata
Current evaluation
Second 'rockcraft pack' run fails when overlay-script creates a group/user because the cached overlay already has them. Workaround is 'rockcraft clean'. 1300 days old, no maintainer response, no labels. Docs now recommend override-build with useradd/groupadd --root instead.
Suggested action: close not a bug
Reason: The overlay filesystem is intentionally cached between runs, so a non-idempotent overlay-script (bare 'addgroup' with no existence check) failing on the second run is expected behavior — the same conclusion reached in the related issue #57, where a maintainer identified leftover-state failures as expected and directed the user to 'rockcraft clean'. The project now documents the recommended pattern in docs/how-to/crafting/add-internal-user-to-a-rock.rst (added in #653): use override-build with 'useradd --root ${CRAFT_PART_INSTALL}' / 'groupadd --root ${CRAFT_PART_INSTALL}', which is inherently idempotent per-build and avoids the cached-overlay problem entirely.
Issue body
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| qwen/qwen3.8-27b |
Impact:
15
Quick Win:
12.75
Staleness:
90
Complexity:
15
Confidence:
75
Support Request:
75
|
close not a bug | Second 'rockcraft pack' run fails when overlay-script creates a group/user because the cached overlay already has them. Workaround is 'rockcraft clean'. 1300 days old, no maintainer response, no labels. Docs now recommend override-build with useradd/groupadd --root instead. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
95
Complexity:
20
Confidence:
70
Support Request:
5
|
close stale | Unlabelled bug report from 3.5 years ago describing a failure when running rockcraft pack twice due to addgroup complaining about an existing group. No maintainer response or updates. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
95
Complexity:
35
Confidence:
80
Support Request:
10
|
needs triage | Unlabelled report of `rockcraft pack` failing on consecutive runs due to non-idempotent overlay scripts. No maintainer response in over 3 years. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
95
Complexity:
15
Confidence:
85
Support Request:
10
|
close stale | Consecutive rockcraft pack runs fail when creating groups or users, throwing a group already exists error. Requires rockcraft clean to succeed. Issue remains unresolved and needs triage. |
Update history
No update history recorded yet.
Related work
-
Duplicate Of:
canonical/rockcraft#57
(confidence 80%)
Same root cause: cached build state (overlay/files) from a prior 'rockcraft pack' run causes the second run to fail. #57 was triaged by a maintainer as expected behavior with 'rockcraft clean' as the remedy; the author of this issue also cross-referenced it.
-
Related To:
canonical/rockcraft#653
(confidence 70%)
Docs PR adding the 'Add an internal user' how-to, which recommends override-build with useradd/groupadd --root ${CRAFT_PART_INSTALL} — the supported alternative to the overlay-script approach used in this issue.
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #57 Leftover files affecting consecutive runs of "rockcraft pack" | rockcraft | open | Rockcraft pack fails on second run after fixing an organize typo: leftover install-dir files cause a cp hard-link 'File exists' error. Maintainer asked reporter to re-test with rockcraft clean between runs; awaiting response. |