The output of snapcraft status foo (and of snapcraft release foo) includes something that’s been colloquially called a “channel map”, which looks like
Track Arch Channel Version Revision
latest all stable - -
candidate 1.0 5
beta ^ ^
edge 1.0+fake1 5
just in case it isn’t clear from the output, a - means the channel is closed and you can’t interact with it, and a ^ means the channel is closed and request for things from that channel will come from a more stable channel that is not closed. From the store AIUI the former is a “closed” channel, the latter is “tracking” (but I might’ve gotten this wrong).
When implementing snap info, as with other such features, we tried to keep the “channel map” as close to the snapcraft status output as was reasonable, and this included the - and ^s.
However in lp:1628640 @sabdfl says “please do show it as closed, explicitly, if its closed.”, which @facundobatista takes to mean it should actually say closed, not - nor ^ (but I’d argue that - / ^ is explicitly saying it’s closed; not being explicit would just print the version, as we were doing before we had channel_maps_list in the JSON).
Unsure which is the right approach (even though I favour the -/^ one, in case it wasn’t clear above 
).
(this all came up because we have a bug in snap info right now 
, with it not showing closed channels at all – which is also “explicit”… but I’m fairly certain this is not what we want).
