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Snapcraft version string doesn't allow certain characters

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Metadata

Project
snapcraft (launchpad)
Number
#1777659
Type
issue
State
open
Author
~popey
Labels
Created
Updated
Closed

Current evaluation

Snapcraft rejects version strings containing underscores (e.g. '2018_931-01') even though the version field is described as 'just for humans'. No maintainer response, no labels, 0 comments, ~8 years old.

Suggested action: needs triage

Reason: The issue has zero comments, no labels, no assignee, and no maintainer interaction in ~8 years (2995 days). It is a valid feature request/bug report about the version string regex being too restrictive for upstream versioning schemes, but it has never been triaged. The underscore restriction is a deliberate design choice in snap's versioning spec, so it may be working-as-intended, but no maintainer has confirmed or rejected it. Tool access to the repo failed (no pinned SHA), so I could not verify whether the version regex has since been relaxed or whether a related PR exists, lowering confidence.

Impact: 30 Quick Win: 21.0 Staleness: 95 Complexity: 30 Confidence: 45 Support Request: 25

Issue body

version: '2018_931-01' "Issues while validating None: The 'version' property does not match the required schema: '2018_931-01' is not a valid snap version. Snap versions consist of upper- and lower-case alphanumeric characters, as well as periods, colons, plus signs, tildes, and hyphens. They cannot begin with a period, colon, plus sign, tilde, or hyphen. They cannot end with a period, colon, or hyphen. " The output of 'snapcraft init' says:- version: '0.1' # just for humans, typically '1.2+git' or '1.3.2' If it's "Just for humans" then maybe we shouldn't prescribe what version number the upstream developer should use, in their already established version system?

Evaluation history

Date Model Scores Action Summary
qwen/qwen3.8-27b
Impact: 30
Quick Win: 21.0
Staleness: 95
Complexity: 30
Confidence: 45
Support Request: 25
needs triage Snapcraft rejects version strings containing underscores (e.g. '2018_931-01') even though the version field is described as 'just for humans'. No maintainer response, no labels, 0 comments, ~8 years old.
qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b
Staleness: 98
Complexity: 20
Confidence: 85
Support Request: 35
close stale Reports snapcraft init rejecting version strings with underscores due to strict validation rules. Unassessed, zero comments, and over eight years inactive.
qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b
Staleness: 98
Complexity: 20
Confidence: 90
Support Request: 10
close stale Snapcraft rejects version strings containing underscores despite documentation stating versions are just for humans. Unlabelled, author-only post from over eight years ago with no maintainer response.
qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6
Staleness: 98
Complexity: 15
Confidence: 85
Support Request: 10
close stale Reports snapcraft's strict version validation rejects upstream version strings containing underscores. Unlabeled, zero comments, inactive for over eight years.
qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6
Staleness: 100
Complexity: 15
Confidence: 90
Support Request: 60
close stale Snapcraft rejects version strings containing underscores despite template comments suggesting flexibility. Unlabelled, no maintainer response, and inactive for ~8 years.

Update history

No update history recorded yet.

Related issues

Issue Project State Summary Similarity
#1769519 Setting the snapcraft.yaml version field to 'git' produces undocumented and broken magic snapcraft (launchpad) open Snapcraft 2.42 (2018): setting version: git in snapcraft.yaml substitutes a mangled git describe output; tags with invalid chars (e.g. underscore) yield an invalid version that snap refuses to install, with no error. No maintainer interaction in 8+ years.
71%
#1586162 snapcraft truncates trailing 0's from version snapcraft (launchpad) closed Abandoned. The trailing zero truncation bug in snapcraft version strings was not addressed and remains unresolved.
71%
#1590620 snapcraft can generage snaps with a name longer than 107 characters snapcraft (launchpad) open Snapcraft only limits the generated snap file name, not the snap name itself, so it can build snaps whose names exceed the store's 107-character limit and fail at upload. Open since 2016, no labels or comments, untriaged.
70%