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No standard way of specifying memory requirements for multipass build VMs

View original Launchpad issue

Metadata

Project
snapcraft (launchpad)
Number
#1842376
Type
issue
State
open
Author
~dmitriis
Labels
—
Created
Updated
Closed
—

Current evaluation

Request for a standard way to specify memory requirements for multipass build VMs in snapcraft, as OOM killer killed the linker during Juju build. Issue is 7 years old with no comments or maintainer engagement.

Suggested action: needs triage

Reason: The issue is from 2019 (2555 days old) with zero comments and no maintainer interaction. It references SNAPCRAFT_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT_MEMORY which the repo context confirms still exists (1 hit), and a related issue (canonical/snapcraft#6025) shows this env var is documented for Multipass VM sizing but has known limitations. The issue has never been triaged, labelled, or acknowledged by a maintainer, making needs_triage the appropriate action. However, given its age and the existence of related tracking issues, it may also be a candidate for close_stale if the maintainers determine the feature has since been addressed or the issue is no longer relevant.

Impact: 35 Quick Win: 21.0 Staleness: 95 Complexity: 40 Confidence: 55 Support Request: 20

Issue body

I tried to build Juju via snapcraft + multipass, however, the VM ran out of memory and OOM killer killed the linker process. Considering that this bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapcraft/+bug/1822265 was closed with a note that SNAPCRAFT_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT_MEMORY is for development/debugging only there needs to be a standard way to do it as some software requires more that 2 GiB of memory to be built. snapcraft --debug Launching a VM. Loaded local plugin for dep Skipping pull juju (already ran) Skipping pull wrappers (already ran) Building juju go install github.com/juju/juju/cmd/juju ^[[6~/snap/go/4301/pkg/tool/linux_amd64/link: signal: killed Failed to run 'go install github.com/juju/juju/cmd/juju' for 'juju': Exited with code 1. Verify that the part is using the correct parameters and try again. Kernel log inside a VM: Sep 03 03:21:32 snapcraft-juju kernel: Out of memory: Kill process 1588 (link) score 859 or sacrifice child Sep 03 03:21:32 snapcraft-juju kernel: Killed process 1588 (link) total-vm:1947684kB, anon-rss:1813888kB, file-rss:0kB, shmem-rss:0kB Sep 03 03:21:32 snapcraft-juju kernel: oom_reaper: reaped process 1588 (link), now anon-rss:0kB, file-rss:0kB, shmem-rss:0kB

Evaluation history

Date Model Scores Action Summary
qwen/qwen3.8-27b
Impact: 35
Quick Win: 21.0
Staleness: 95
Complexity: 40
Confidence: 55
Support Request: 20
needs triage Request for a standard way to specify memory requirements for multipass build VMs in snapcraft, as OOM killer killed the linker during Juju build. Issue is 7 years old with no comments or maintainer engagement.
qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b
Staleness: 95
Complexity: 30
Confidence: 85
Support Request: 20
needs triage Issue requesting a standard configuration method for multipass VM memory limits during builds, currently unlabelled and lacking maintainer engagement.
qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b
Staleness: 95
Complexity: 30
Confidence: 85
Support Request: 20
close stale Request for a standard configuration method to set memory limits for multipass build VMs. Open for 7 years with no maintainer response or comments.
qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6
Staleness: 95
Complexity: 25
Confidence: 80
Support Request: 10
close stale Snapcraft multipass build environment lacks a standard way to configure VM memory limits, causing OOM failures for memory-intensive builds. Unaddressed for over six years.
qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6
Staleness: 95
Complexity: 30
Confidence: 85
Support Request: 15
close stale Feature request for a standard way to set memory limits for multipass build VMs in Snapcraft. Open for over six years with no maintainer interaction, likely outdated due to significant provider refactoring.

Update history

No update history recorded yet.

Related work

  • Related To: canonical/snapcraft#6025 (confidence 70%)

    Related issue about SNAPCRAFT_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT_* env vars being ignored on macOS, showing the env var mechanism exists but has known limitations. Both issues concern the same underlying feature gap.

Related issues

No related issues found above the similarity threshold.