Gnome-42-2204 seems orphaned but was not uninstalled

snapd
1

I have a system running Ubuntu 20.04LTS with only a few snaps. recently I installed “tuba” and uninstalled it again because it wasn’t to my liking. Now I see that I have gnome-42-2204 installed (I noticed because of an unfamiliar dialog alerting me of an update). The description shown with snap info --verbose gnome-42-2204 says:

This snap is automatically installed and removed when needed. Manually adding or removing this snap is not recommended and might break things.

I do not recall having this snap before so it was likely installed as a dependency with tuba, but then it should also have been removed, right? This is the list of installed snaps:

Name               Version                     Rev    Tracking       Publisher   Notes
bare               1.0                         5      latest/stable  canonical✓  base
core               16-2.61.2                   16928  latest/stable  canonical✓  core
core18             20231027                    2812   latest/stable  canonical✓  base
core22             20240111                    1122   latest/stable  canonical✓  base
gnome-3-28-1804    3.28.0-19-g98f9e67.98f9e67  198    latest/stable  canonical✓  -
gnome-42-2204      0+git.510a601               172    latest/stable  canonical✓  -
gtk-common-themes  0.1-81-g442e511             1535   latest/stable  canonical✓  -
skype              8.116.0.213                 340    latest/stable  skype✓      -

snap info --verbose skype says base: core18 is there another method to identify dependencies? And if there is no dependency any more, why was gnome-42-2204not removed? Many thanks for any hints.

2

You’re talking about content snaps here. Here’s one way to list their dependents:

$ snap connections gnome-42-2204
Interface               Plug                              Slot                         Notes
content[gnome-42-2204]  chromium:gnome-42-2204            gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -
content[gnome-42-2204]  discord:gnome-42-2204             gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -
content[gnome-42-2204]  element-desktop:gnome-42-2204     gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -
content[gnome-42-2204]  epiphany:gnome-42-2204            gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -
content[gnome-42-2204]  firefox:gnome-42-2204             gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -
content[gnome-42-2204]  fractal:gnome-42-2204             gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -
content[gnome-42-2204]  gedit:gnome-42-2204               gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -
content[gnome-42-2204]  mattermost-desktop:gnome-42-2204  gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -
content[gnome-42-2204]  obs-studio:gnome-42-2204          gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -
content[gnome-42-2204]  snap-store:gnome-42-2204          gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -
content[gnome-42-2204]  zoom-client:gnome-42-2204         gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -
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3

that gives me:

$ snap connections gnome-42-2204
Interface  Plug  Slot                         Notes
content    -     gnome-42-2204:gnome-42-2204  -

so I can safely nuke it?

4

In this case yes. If you install an app that later needs it, it should install itself again automatically, otherwise since nothing uses it, you can remove it to clear up disk space.

I believe the functionality to remove content snaps automatically isn’t properly setup yet but is on the to-do list to get sorted out.

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