Improve documentation for the nil plugin
Metadata
Current evaluation
Documentation clarified by PR #455, merged as commit 391143bc1. Requested source support was rejected because sources are private per part and left to the copy plugin.
Resolution: closed resolved
Reason: PR #455 was merged as commit 391143bc1 and clarified the nil plugin's purpose. Maintainers rejected nil source inheritance because sources are private per part, and later source support was added to the copy plugin.
Evaluated by: mr-cal-bot
No scores available.
Issue body
The nil plugin doesnt even pull, while e.g. the make plugin will always execute "make" in the toplevel upstream dir. Thus there is not option to patch or prepare a custom makefile or something similar into the build.
Thus requesting the nil plugin should inherit the schema from super() to allow using snapcraft to get sources without replicating all in custom makefiles. Alternatively, provide a pull plugin doing this (so that it is just like nil -- except that it pulls).
Finally, if nil gets e.g. source-type and other stuff set which it does not have in its schema and ignores, it should error out and not silently ignore.
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed resolved | Documentation clarified by PR #455, merged as commit 391143bc1. Requested source support was rejected because sources are private per part and left to the copy plugin. | |
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed resolved | Documented that nil cannot pull sources and made unsupported source keys fail validation; merged in snapcraft#455 via commit 391143bc1. | |
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed resolved | Merged #455 (391143bc1) documented that nil cannot pull sources and made unsupported source keys fail validation. No pull-only plugin or inherited source schema was added. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b | — | — | Abandoned after over ten years of inactivity. The request to modify the nil plugin schema or add a pull-only plugin was closed without resolution or implementation. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b | — | — | Requesting nil plugin schema inheritance, pull support, and strict validation was closed without resolution. The enhancement remains unimplemented and the issue is abandoned. |
Update history
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| created |
Related work
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Likely Fixed By:
snapcraft#455
(confidence 98%)
Documentation PR titled "Nil plugin: Make purpose more clear in documentation" merged as commit 391143bc1.
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Related To:
snapcraft#2326
(confidence 75%)
Later removed implicit source handling from the nil plugin.
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #300 plugins: improve nil plugin docstring | craft-parts | merged | Merged PR #300 in commit d7c1b68d, expanding the nil plugin docstring with guidance for source-less parts and parts using override-build. | |
| #455 Nil plugin: Make purpose more clear in documentation. | snapcraft | merged | Merged in snapcraft#455 (391143bc1), clarifying that nil cannot pull sources, adding examples and tests, and rejecting unsupported source keywords. | |
| #3949 legacy/plugins: improve nil plugin docstring | snapcraft | merged | Merged as 64d54ddfb, improving the legacy nil plugin docstring; it remade the earlier unmerged PR #3913. |