Need --autoclean or similar
Metadata
Current evaluation
Requested opt-in automatic cleanup of stale lifecycle steps. The maintainer agreed with the opt-in approach, but current Snapcraft exposes no autoclean option or equivalent.
Suggested action: keep open
Reason: The maintainer explicitly said they were "on board" with an opt-in override, and the reporter confirmed that behavior. However, repository searches found no autoclean or auto option, current documentation still requires manual cleaning, and PR #2152 only automatically cleans and reruns an explicitly specified part rather than resolving the requested dependency-wide workflow.
Evaluated by: mr-cal-bot
Impact:
36
Quick Win:
12
Complexity:
55
Confidence:
87
Actionability:
72
Issue body
When tinkering with snapcraft.yaml files, I often get stuff such as this:
The 'stage' step for 'storage-framework' needs to be run again, but 'storage-provider-owncloud' depends upon it. Please clean the build step of 'storage-provider-owncloud' first.
Now I'm forced to do
snapcraft clean storage-provider-owncloud --step=build
If something else needs cleaning, I get another message to clean that bit, ad nauseam.
This is really annoying. snapcraft knows exactly what needs to be done, so why can't it just do it for me?
It would be really nice to have some option to say "just go and build the thing and, while you are at it, if you find something out of date, clean it automatically please."
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha |
Impact:
36
Quick Win:
12
Complexity:
55
Confidence:
87
Actionability:
72
|
keep open | Requested opt-in automatic cleanup of stale lifecycle steps. The maintainer agreed with the opt-in approach, but current Snapcraft exposes no autoclean option or equivalent. | |
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha |
Impact:
38
Quick Win:
13
Complexity:
55
Confidence:
84
Actionability:
74
|
keep open | Request for an opt-in automatic-clean mode to avoid repeatedly cleaning stale dependency steps; maintainers discussed and endorsed it, but no implementation or resolution was identified. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Impact:
30
Quick Win:
11
Complexity:
40
Confidence:
70
Actionability:
60
|
needs triage | Feature request for --autoclean flag to automatically clean stale build dependencies. Open for ~9.5 years with no maintainer engagement, labels, or comments. | |
| qwen/qwen3.8-27b |
Impact:
30
Quick Win:
14
Staleness:
95
Complexity:
55
Confidence:
60
Support Request:
10
|
close stale | Feature request for an --autoclean option to auto-clean stale parts when a dependency's step needs re-running. 9.5 years old, zero comments, no labels; the legacy parts system it targets was replaced by craft-parts in snapcraft 2.0+. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
98
Complexity:
15
Confidence:
90
Support Request:
10
|
needs triage | Feature request for an --autoclean flag in snapcraft to automatically clean outdated build steps when dependencies change. Unanswered and inactive for over 9 years. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
98
Complexity:
15
Confidence:
85
Support Request:
10
|
close stale | Feature request for an --autoclean flag to automatically resolve build step dependencies in snapcraft. Remains open with zero maintainer interaction after over 9 years. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
100
Complexity:
10
Confidence:
90
Support Request:
5
|
close stale | Feature request for an --autoclean flag in snapcraft to automatically clean outdated build steps when dependencies change. Unlabelled and inactive for over 9 years. |
Update history
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| created |
Related work
-
Related To:
canonical/snapcraft#2152
(confidence 92%)
Merged commit 9d1407a85 makes an explicitly named part automatically clean and rerun, partially addressing the workflow but not providing global autoclean behavior.
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #2145 lifecycle: automatically clean dirty steps | snapcraft | merged | Merged in canonical/snapcraft#2145 (commit d033c7d0f), adding opt-in outdated_step_action=clean to rebuild changed lifecycle steps and resolve LP #1774021. | |
| #1647907 When a step is dirty, snapcraft doesn't autoclean and reexecute it | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Automatic cleanup and rebuilding of outdated lifecycle steps was implemented in canonical/snapcraft#2145 and merged as d033c7d0f. | |
| #1774021 Support automatically cleaning dirty steps | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Fixed by automatically cleaning dirty lifecycle steps in snapcraft PR #2145, merged as commit d033c7d0f. |