Relative path base poorly documented

Metadata

Project: snapcraft (launchpad)
Number: #1808896
Type: issue
State: open
Author: ~racb
Labels: —
Created: 2018-12-18 01:53 AM UTC
Updated: 2019-02-07 10:44 PM UTC
Closed: —

Current evaluation

Python plugin 'requirements' doc doesn't state what relative paths are based on, and the 'Failed to find the referred requirements file' error doesn't say where snapcraft looked. Reported on snapcraft 2.43.1; no labels, comments, or maintainer activity since.

Suggested action: needs triage

Reason: The issue shows no sign of ever being triaged: no labels, 0 comments, no assignee, and no maintainer response in ~7.5 years. It is not safe to close as stale without evidence the request was addressed, because I could not verify (repo tooling returned 'No pinned SHA available' errors) whether current snapcraft docs now specify the base path or the error message now reports the searched location. A maintainer should check the current python plugin docs and error text before deciding to close or keep.

Impact: 30 Quick Win: 24.0 Staleness: 90 Complexity: 20 Confidence: 35 Support Request: 40

Issue body

https://docs.snapcraft.io/the-python-plugin/8529 says "Path to a requirements.txt file". Relative to what? I'm getting: Failed to find the referred requirements file at the given path: 'requirements.txt'. Check the property and ensure the file exists. This is unhelpful because it isn't telling me where it's looking, requiring me to guess by trying various base paths. To fix this, please: 1. Document what the path should be relative to. 2. Arrange for the error message to tell me where it actually looked. This is particularly important for snapcraft, IMHO, as depending on what's going on various different base paths are used. This was with snapcraft 2.43.1 on Xenial.

Evaluation history

Date	Model	Scores	Action	Summary
2026-09-01 08:38 AM UTC	qwen/qwen3.8-27b	Impact: 30 Quick Win: 24.0 Staleness: 90 Complexity: 20 Confidence: 35 Support Request: 40	needs triage	Python plugin 'requirements' doc doesn't state what relative paths are based on, and the 'Failed to find the referred requirements file' error doesn't say where snapcraft looked. Reported on snapcraft 2.43.1; no labels, comments, or maintainer activity since.
2026-07-23 11:58 AM UTC	qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b	Staleness: 98 Complexity: 15 Confidence: 90 Support Request: 20	close stale	Over 7-year-old issue requesting documentation and error message improvements for the snapcraft python plugin's requirements.txt path. References obsolete snapcraft 2.43.1 and Ubuntu Xenial with no maintainer interaction.
2026-07-22 12:20 PM UTC	qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b	Staleness: 98 Complexity: 15 Confidence: 95 Support Request: 25	close stale	Request to document the base path for a relative requirements.txt property and improve the associated error message. Currently untriaged and inactive for over seven years.
2026-07-10 01:47 AM UTC	qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6	Staleness: 98 Complexity: 15 Confidence: 90 Support Request: 20	close stale	Documentation and error message improvement request for snapcraft's python plugin requirements.txt path. Issue is extremely stale with no maintainer interaction since 2018 and references a deprecated snapcraft version.
2026-06-21 04:05 PM UTC	qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6	Staleness: 98 Complexity: 15 Confidence: 90 Support Request: 20	close stale	Request to document the base path for requirements.txt and improve error messages in snapcraft's python plugin. Over 7 years old with no maintainer activity.

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