Snapcraft should detect being run inside multipass and error
Metadata
Current evaluation
Rejected: maintainers chose to allow running Snapcraft inside Multipass, so no environment-detection error was added.
Resolution: closed not a bug
Reason: Maintainer mr-cal closed the request as working as designed, agreeing with seth-arnold that users may legitimately run Snapcraft inside Multipass. No resolving PR or commit was associated.
Evaluated by: mr-cal-bot
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed not a bug | Rejected: maintainers chose to allow running Snapcraft inside Multipass, so no environment-detection error was added. | |
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed not a bug | Rejected: users may legitimately run Snapcraft inside Multipass, so no environment-detection error was added. Maintainer mr-cal closed the request. | |
| 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. |
Update history
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| created |
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1806083 snapcraft fails to locate multipass (inside a multipass session) | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Snapcraft 3.0.1 falsely reported Multipass missing inside a Multipass guest; Darwin-only detection in e9ae8d29f addressed the old path, but the Launchpad record remains open. | |
| #1810915 snapcraft can't tell when multipass is installed but disabled | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | Snapcraft misclassified an installed but disabled Multipass snap as missing, prompting installation before failing. The 2018 report remains untriaged, and its behavior needs validation against the current provider architecture. | |
| #5145 snapcraft fails to launch multipass instance when multipass isn't pre-installed | snapcraft | open | Snapcraft emits cryptic 'Remote "snapcraft" is unknown or unreachable / exit code 2' when Multipass can't launch the build instance; maintainer traced it to image-server unavailability or non-amd64 hosts, fix tracked in craft-providers#211 | |
| #1794955 snapcraft erroneously errors when deleting non-existent multipass container | snapcraft (launchpad) | open | snapcraft clean treats an absent Multipass instance as a deletion error after Multipass was reinstalled; the report is concrete but untriaged and may need validation against the current clean path. | |
| #1904774 Snapcraft runs multipass setup but fails | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Fixed in merged PR #3381 via commit 51e75b4de: Multipass cleanup now checks whether the VM instance exists before deleting it. | |
| #1791821 multipass should use snapcraft defined environments | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Multipass now launches Snapcraft-defined build images; fixed by canonical/snapcraft#2258 (commit 5ffefbf96), including a Darwin launch workaround. | |
| #1794497 Snapcraft can't re-use build VM if anything went wrong with the initial setup | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Fixed by the Multipass provider check merged in PR #3381 as commit 51e75b4de. | |
| #1984223 Snapcraft on riscv64 tries to install non-existent multipass snap | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Fixed in Snapcraft 9 where lxd became the default provider on riscv64, resolving the multipass installation prompt issue. | |
| #1813979 snapcraft cleanbuild wants to install multipass but it's already installed | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Deb-packaged Snapcraft 2.43.1 failed while Multipass worked in 3.0.1. Legacy cleanbuild was later removed because builds are clean by default. |