cleaning a step on a dir built with an old snapcraft doesn't mention that a full clean is needed too
Metadata
Current evaluation
⚠️ This summary may be outdated — the issue content or evaluation prompts have changed since this evaluation was made.
Closed without resolution. The missing error guidance for cleaning steps on legacy snapcraft builds was not fixed. Issue appears abandoned due to age and zero comments.
Suggested action: —
No scores available.
Issue body
I have a snap directory that I build with an old snapcraft version. When I try to clean a step it tells me:
Failed to clean step 'strip': Missing necessary state. Please run
strip again.
So, I run step again, and then try to clean the step again, getting the same error.
What the error didn't tell me is that I needed to execute a full clean before running strip again.
elopio@calchas:~/workspace/canonical/snapcraft/examples/libpipeline$ ./../../bin/snapcraft clean -s s
trip
Cleaning snapping area for libpipeline
Failed to clean step 'strip': Missing necessary state. Please run
strip again.
elopio@calchas:~/workspace/canonical/snapcraft/examples/libpipeline$ ./../../bin/snapcraft strip
Skipping pull libpipeline (already ran)
'pipelinetest' has prerequisites that need to be staged: libpipeline
Skipping pull libpipeline (already ran)
Skipping build libpipeline (already ran)
Skipping stage libpipeline (already ran)
Skipping pull pipelinetest (already ran)
Skipping build libpipeline (already ran)
'pipelinetest' has prerequisites that need to be staged: libpipeline
Skipping pull libpipeline (already ran)
Skipping build libpipeline (already ran)
Skipping stage libpipeline (already ran)
Skipping build pipelinetest (already ran)
Skipping stage libpipeline (already ran)
'pipelinetest' has prerequisites that need to be staged: libpipeline
Skipping pull libpipeline (already ran)
Skipping build libpipeline (already ran)
Skipping stage libpipeline (already ran)
Skipping stage pipelinetest (already ran)
Skipping strip libpipeline (already ran)
'pipelinetest' has prerequisites that need to be staged: libpipeline
Skipping pull libpipeline (already ran)
Skipping build libpipeline (already ran)
Skipping stage libpipeline (already ran)
Skipping strip pipelinetest (already ran)
elopio@calchas:~/workspace/canonical/snapcraft/examples/libpipeline$ ./../../bin/snapcraft clean -s strip
Cleaning snapping area for libpipeline
Failed to clean step 'strip': Missing necessary state. Please run
strip again.
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b | — | — | Closed without resolution. The missing error guidance for cleaning steps on legacy snapcraft builds was not fixed. Issue appears abandoned due to age and zero comments. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b | — | — | Closed without resolution. The misleading error message for cleaning steps on legacy snapcraft builds was not addressed, indicating the issue was abandoned or superseded by newer versions. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 | — | — | Abandoned. The snapcraft step-cleaning error message still fails to indicate that a full clean is required for directories built with older versions. |
Update history
No update history recorded yet.
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1774021 Support automatically cleaning dirty steps | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Automatic cleaning of dirty steps in the snapcraft CLI was closed and abandoned due to inactivity. No implementation or resolution was provided. | |
| #1799925 snapcraft gives conflicting advice for cleaning parts | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Closed without a fix. Snapcraft incorrectly advised running snapcraft clean with part and step flags, which were unsupported. The author worked around it with a full clean. The report appears abandoned or superseded by later updates. | |
| #1647907 When a step is dirty, snapcraft doesn't autoclean and reexecute it | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Closed without resolution. The request for automatic dirty-step cleaning was abandoned due to prolonged inactivity. | |
| #1578170 Your first snap: snapcraft clean needed before second snapcraft stage | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Closed and abandoned without resolution. The issue highlights a documentation gap where the Ubuntu snap tutorial skips steps on re-runs unless snapcraft clean is run first. No fix or update was applied. | |
| #1590811 "clean that part" advice doesn't tell you the command to use | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Closed without implementation. The suggestion to include the exact snapcraft clean command in error messages received no comments or resolution, indicating it was abandoned. | |
| #1675516 can't cleanbuild snapcraft itself | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Closed without resolution or comments, the report of a failed snapcraft cleanbuild due to missing build-packages was abandoned. | |
| #1746359 snapcraft cleanbuild --debug should provide guidance on build failure | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Closed as abandoned due to inactivity. The requested debug shell guidance for snapcraft cleanbuild was never implemented. | |
| #1615060 snapcraft clean is incomplete | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Reporting that snapcraft clean skips local .snap files was closed without comments or resolution, indicating the report was abandoned or left unresolved. | |
| #421 Suggest a full clean if step clean is missing state. | snapcraft | merged | Merged. Updates Snapcraft to suggest a full clean instead of re-running a step when per-step cleaning state is missing, resolving Launchpad bug #1561328. | |
| #1596596 in order to clean, the snapcraft.yaml has to be valid and the parts cache up-to-date | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Abandoned without resolution. The reported limitation where snapcraft clean fails on invalid YAML or outdated cache remains unaddressed, as no fix or pull request was provided. |