Snapcraft should detect being run inside multipass and error
Metadata
Current evaluation
Rejected. Maintainers disagreed, noting users may legitimately run snapcraft inside multipass VMs. The issue was closed without implementation.
Suggested action: —
No scores available.
Issue body
Some users will install multipass and mistakenly run snapcraft inside of it, thinking that's why multipass was installed as a snapcraft dependency.
We should error out when the outer snapcraft (frontend) detects that it is running in multipass, with a message like:
"""
It looks like you are trying to run snapcraft inside a multipass VM.
Instead, please exit your multipass VM and run snapcraft on your native system.
"""
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b | — | — | Rejected. Maintainers disagreed, noting users may legitimately run snapcraft inside multipass VMs. The issue was closed without implementation. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
98
Complexity:
15
Confidence:
90
Support Request:
20
|
close stale | Request to add detection and error messaging when snapcraft runs inside a Multipass VM. The issue has had no maintainer interaction or comments in over 7 years. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
98
Complexity:
15
Confidence:
85
Support Request:
10
|
close stale | Feature request to detect and error when snapcraft runs inside a multipass VM, guiding users to run it natively. Untriaged and inactive for over 7 years. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
98
Complexity:
15
Confidence:
90
Support Request:
10
|
close stale | Suggests snapcraft should detect and error when run inside a Multipass VM to prevent user confusion. Unaddressed for over 7 years with no maintainer interaction or labels. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
95
Complexity:
20
Confidence:
85
Support Request:
10
|
needs triage | Feature request to detect and error when snapcraft runs inside a multipass VM, suggesting native execution. Unlabelled and inactive for over seven years. |
Update history
No update history recorded yet.
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1904774 Snapcraft runs multipass setup but fails | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Abandoned. Snapcraft failed during multipass VM cleanup after reporting a missing instance. Closed without comments or fixes. | |
| #1813979 snapcraft cleanbuild wants to install multipass but it's already installed | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Closed without resolution. Likely abandoned or superseded by newer snapcraft and multipass versions that resolved the detection and launch failures. | |
| #5145 snapcraft fails to launch multipass instance when multipass isn't pre-installed | snapcraft | open | Snapcraft fails to launch a multipass VM with 'Remote snapcraft is unknown or unreachable' when multipass is installed on-demand. Maintainer triaged it as an image-server availability issue and linked craft-providers#211 for better error messaging; still open. | |
| #1806083 snapcraft fails to locate multipass (inside a multipass session) | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | snapcraft 3.0.1 fails to detect an installed multipass when run inside a multipass VM, prompting to install and dropping the user into a shell. No maintainer activity for ~7 years; affected version is long obsolete. | |
| #1810915 snapcraft can't tell when multipass is installed but disabled | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Snapcraft fails to detect a disabled multipass snap, prompting to install it and then erroring out. Reported against multipass 2018.12.1 / ~2019 snapcraft; untriaged, 0 comments, no labels, inactive for ~7.6 years. | |
| #1791821 multipass should use snapcraft defined environments | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Closed without discussion or resolution, indicating the feature request was likely abandoned or superseded. The proposal to align multipass with snapcraft-defined build images received no further action. | |
| #1794507 snapcraft fails ugly with multipass when a space is inserted into `name:` field | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Closed without resolution. Reported a cryptic multipass launch failure when a space was present in the snapcraft name field, requesting better input validation. No fix or follow-up action was taken. | |
| #1806470 Does not handle multipass instance being deleted | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Closed without resolution. Snapcraft stalls when an externally deleted Multipass instance is not purged. No fix was implemented, indicating the issue was abandoned. | |
| #4106 Error 2 on snapcraft on linux with multipass: | snapcraft | closed | Resolved as fixed after a temporary Multipass remote image unavailability cleared. The reporter closed the issue. | |
| #1856594 Snapcraft tutorial errors out on OSX with multipass error, "returned exit code 2" | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Dec 2019 report: snapcraft 3.9 on macOS fails via multipass (apt 404s, mount exit code 2) and crashes with AttributeError on os.sched_getaffinity. No maintainer activity; that code path no longer exists in current snapcraft, and macOS support was dropped. |