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[doc] Clarify the difference between `-v` and `--verbosity` in help messages

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Metadata

Project
snapcraft
Number
#5097
Type
issue
State
open
Author
sed-i
Labels
Status: Triaged Type: Enhancement
Created
Updated
Closed
—

Current evaluation

Clarify the confusing overlap between -v/--verbose and --verbosity in snapcraft help messages. Triaged as an enhancement; maintainer acknowledged it's valid but the help text is driven internally by Canonical and not ready for external contribution. An upstream craft-cli PR (#424) was submitted.

Suggested action: keep open

Reason: Maintainer mr-cal explicitly stated on 2026-03-16: 'I'm leaving this issue open to acknowledge that it could be improved, but this isn't ready for a contribution.' The issue is triaged (Status: Triaged, Type: Enhancement), the underlying help text in craft-cli/dispatcher.py is still unchanged, and an upstream fix (craft-cli#424) exists. It remains a valid, acknowledged enhancement.

Impact: 25 Quick Win: 16.25 Staleness: 45 Complexity: 35 Confidence: 80 Support Request: 10

Issue body

### What needs to get done From the output of `snapcraft <command> --help`, I can't tell the difference between: ``` -v, --verbose: Show debug information and be more verbose ``` and ``` --verbosity: Set the verbosity level to 'quiet', 'brief', 'verbose', 'debug' or 'trace' ``` I'm guessing: - `-verbose` prints debug logs to the local stdout - `--verbosity` prints various levels of logs to the remote build log file It would be handy if the use cases were clearly differentiated in the help message. ### Why it needs to get done Avoid unnecessary confusion.

Evaluation history

Date Model Scores Action Summary
qwen/qwen3.8-27b
Impact: 25
Quick Win: 16.25
Staleness: 45
Complexity: 35
Confidence: 80
Support Request: 10
keep open Clarify the confusing overlap between -v/--verbose and --verbosity in snapcraft help messages. Triaged as an enhancement; maintainer acknowledged it's valid but the help text is driven internally by Canonical and not ready for external contribution. An upstream craft-cli PR (#424) was submitted.
qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b
Staleness: 70
Complexity: 15
Confidence: 85
Support Request: 0
keep open Enhancement to clarify help text differences between -v/--verbose and --verbosity in snapcraft. Triaged and acknowledged by maintainers as a valid improvement, but currently internally driven and not open for external contributions.
qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6
Staleness: 60
Complexity: 15
Confidence: 85
Support Request: 0
keep open Issue requests clarifying help text for -v/--verbose vs --verbosity flags. Triaged and acknowledged by maintainers as valid, but marked as not ready for external contribution while tracked internally.
qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6
Staleness: 65
Complexity: 10
Confidence: 85
Support Request: 0
keep open Clarify help text differences between -v/--verbose and --verbosity flags to prevent confusion. Triaged enhancement, but currently unavailable for external contributions as the text is managed internally by Canonical. Original assignee has stepped down.

Update history

No update history recorded yet.

Related work

  • Related To: canonical/craft-cli#424 (confidence 85%)

    Upstream craft-cli PR submitted by gcomneno to fix the --verbose help text, which is the source of the confusing message referenced in this issue.

Related issues

Issue Project State Summary Similarity
#424 docs(cli): clarify relationship between --verbose and --verbosity craft-cli closed Abandoned. Maintainers cited conflicting internal documentation guidelines and decided to pause the effort until better internal guidance is established. No changes were merged.
72%
#5424 Add `--verbosity`, `--verbose`, and `--quiet` for legacy commands in Snapcraft 7 snapcraft closed Implemented in Snapcraft 8.11 via PR #5423. The verbosity flags were added to the current release, but the maintainer declined to backport the enhancement to Snapcraft 7, closing the issue.
71%