snapcraft.yaml does not allow WatchdogSec for systemd services

Metadata

Project: snapcraft (launchpad)
Number: #1794814
Type: issue
State: open
Author: ~presto88
Labels: —
Created: 2018-09-27 03:14 PM UTC
Updated: 2018-10-01 02:00 PM UTC
Closed: —

Current evaluation

Feature request to add a watchdog-sec field to snapcraft.yaml so generated systemd units set WatchdogSec, enabling daemon:notify watchdog restarts. Open ~8 years, no labels, no comments, no maintainer interaction.

Suggested action: needs triage

Reason: The issue has no labels, zero comments, and no maintainer response in ~8 years (last activity 2891 days ago), so it has never been triaged. It is a legitimate feature request (add watchdog-sec to the app schema and emit WatchdogSec in the generated .service file), but I could not verify via tools whether snapcraft now supports this, so a maintainer should confirm current schema support before closing or scoping it.

Impact: 45 Quick Win: 24.75 Staleness: 90 Complexity: 45 Confidence: 55 Support Request: 20

Issue body

Snapcraft allows a "daemon: notify" type which enables the watchdog feature of systemd. However, systemd will not enable the watchdog feature unless the systemd service field "WatchdogSec=x"is present with a non-zero value. The default value if the field is not specified is 0, thus the watchdog feature is disabled. This means that the daemon: notify type is not working at all. I have a daemon process that uses the notify mechanism by sending "WATCHDOG=1" via sd_notify as described in the systemd documentation, https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.service.html When I stop sending the WATCHDOG=1 message, the service should restart automatically. However, it does not restart because the WatchdogSec value has not been provided. Recommendation is to add: watchdog-sec: 5 (example) to snapcraft.yaml which will then generate "WatchDogSec=5" in the [Service] section of the systemd .service file for the snap.

Evaluation history

Date	Model	Scores	Action	Summary
2026-09-01 08:26 AM UTC	qwen/qwen3.8-27b	Impact: 45 Quick Win: 24.75 Staleness: 90 Complexity: 45 Confidence: 55 Support Request: 20	needs triage	Feature request to add a watchdog-sec field to snapcraft.yaml so generated systemd units set WatchdogSec, enabling daemon:notify watchdog restarts. Open ~8 years, no labels, no comments, no maintainer interaction.
2026-07-23 11:57 AM UTC	qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b	Staleness: 95 Complexity: 10 Confidence: 90 Support Request: 5	needs triage	Missing watchdog-sec configuration in snapcraft.yaml prevents systemd watchdog from functioning with daemon: notify. Untriaged and inactive for nearly 8 years.
2026-07-22 12:20 PM UTC	qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b	Staleness: 98 Complexity: 35 Confidence: 90 Support Request: 10	close stale	Feature request to add watchdog-sec field to snapcraft.yaml for systemd daemon: notify services. Unlabelled, zero comments, inactive for ~7.8 years.
2026-07-10 12:39 AM UTC	qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6	Staleness: 98 Complexity: 20 Confidence: 70 Support Request: 10	close stale	Missing watchdog-sec configuration in snapcraft.yaml prevents systemd watchdog from functioning with daemon: notify. Unlabelled, zero comments, inactive for nearly 8 years.
2026-06-21 02:51 PM UTC	qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6	Staleness: 95 Complexity: 35 Confidence: 80 Support Request: 10	needs triage	Request to add watchdog-sec configuration to snapcraft.yaml for systemd services. Unlabelled, zero maintainer interaction, inactive for over 7 years.

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