Provide option to filter stage packages

Metadata

Project: snapcraft
Number: #5485
Type: issue
State: open
Author: kubiko
Labels: Status: Triaged Type: Enhancement
Created: 2025-05-12 08:15 AM UTC
Updated: 2025-05-20 01:39 PM UTC
Closed: —

Current evaluation

Enhancement to exclude unwanted dependency packages from stage-packages after base migrations; triaged and maintainer-endorsed, with reproducible core22/core24 examples showing major snap-size growth, but remains unimplemented.

Suggested action: keep open

Reason: The issue is labeled Status: Triaged and Type: Enhancement, and maintainer mr-cal explicitly agreed that stage-packages filtering is primitive and needs improvement. The reporter provides core22/core24 branches and manifests demonstrating 70% size growth, while the current project model still exposes stage_packages as Grammar[list[str]] and no package-exclusion implementation was found.

Evaluated by: mr-cal-bot

Impact: 58 Quick Win: 18 Complexity: 60 Confidence: 91 Actionability: 79

Issue body

### What needs to get done When migrating from base `core22` to `core24` my snap unexpectedly grew in size by 70%. While inspecting the resulting manifests, it appears that way more stage packages were pulled in unnecessarily. Be this the result of the deb package dependency change or something else, the runtime requirements of the snap did not change. Rather than filter excess files individually, an ideal option would be to allow filtering on the stage package level. For example: ``` stage-packages: - abootimg - bash - bash-completion - bc - -adduser - -llvm ``` Example snap to reproduce the issue: https://github.com/kubiko/toolbox/tree/22 https://github.com/kubiko/toolbox/tree/24 Resulting manifests: [base `core22` manifest](https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/vcMKhdwyfP/) [base `core24` manifest](https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/NS4jYZwwjq/) ### Why it needs to get done Allow additional syntax in the `stage-packages` definition, allowing filtering on the stage package level.

Evaluation history

Date	Model	Scores	Action	Summary
2026-10-02 05:13 PM UTC	stealth/space-bunny-alpha	Impact: 58 Quick Win: 18 Complexity: 60 Confidence: 91 Actionability: 79	keep open	Enhancement to exclude unwanted dependency packages from stage-packages after base migrations; triaged and maintainer-endorsed, with reproducible core22/core24 examples showing major snap-size growth, but remains unimplemented.
2026-09-20 12:39 PM UTC	qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b	Impact: 65 Quick Win: 25 Complexity: 45 Confidence: 70 Actionability: 70	keep open	Enhancement to allow filtering stage packages by name using minus prefix syntax (e.g., -adduser). Triaged and acknowledged by maintainers as a valid improvement over current primitive filtering.
2026-09-01 02:48 AM UTC	qwen/qwen3.8-27b	Impact: 50 Quick Win: 22 Staleness: 65 Complexity: 55 Confidence: 85 Support Request: 10	keep open	Feature request to add exclusion syntax (e.g. leading dash) to stage-packages so users can filter out unwanted stage packages, motivated by a 70% snap size increase when migrating from core22 to core24. Triaged, acknowledged by a maintainer, and tracked in internal ticket SNAPCRAFT-1132; not yet implemented.
2026-07-22 12:14 PM UTC	qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b	Staleness: 85 Complexity: 45 Confidence: 85 Support Request: 10	keep open	Enhancement request to add package-level filtering syntax to stage-packages. Triaged and acknowledged by maintainers, but inactive for over a year. Awaiting implementation or community contribution.
2026-07-08 04:38 PM UTC	qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6	Staleness: 85 Complexity: 40 Confidence: 85 Support Request: 10	keep open	Enhancement to allow filtering stage packages via a negative prefix syntax in snapcraft.yaml. Triaged and acknowledged by maintainers, but inactive for over a year.

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