Snap search / find No matching snaps for package

thimslugga · August 25, 2021, 4:20pm

Hi,

I was attempting to search for packages via search/find while playing with Ubuntu Core 20 on repurposed chromebox and I’d either get undesirable results or no results at all. Attempting to install the package by name works though. Any ideas why snap search/find is useless for actually finding and discovering snaps?

root@chromebox:~# snap search alsa
Name             Version                      Publisher        Notes  Summary
musescore        3.6.2                        musescore✓       -      Create, play and print beautiful sheet music.
obs-studio       27.0.1                       snapcrafters     -      Free and open source software for live streaming and screen recording
scidvspc-hkvc    svn-3144-20201022            hanishkvc        -      svidvspc - A Powerfull Chess Tookit
gamecake         V21.541+git18.78e5d8d-dirty  xriss            -      a single exe cross platform Lua game engine
sonobus          1.4.5                        sonosaurus       -      SonoBus
subtitle-edit    3.5.13.192                   nzatkovich       -      The subtitle editor :)
dspatcher        1.0                          marcustomlinson  -      Cross-Platform Graphical Tool for DSPatch
wps-2019-snap    11.2.0.9505                  cyrpaut          -      WPS Office 2019 - All languages - No Internet
rtv-lbo          1.21.0                       lbo              -      Browse Reddit from your terminal
mpg123-cm        1.28.2                       cmatsuoka        -      A fast console MPEG audio player
v4l2rtspserver   0.0.8                        ogra             -      RTSP and HTTP camera stream server
v4l2-rtspserver  0+git.d0da079                mpromonet        -      RTSP Server for V4L2 device capture supporting HEVC/H264/JPEG/VP8/VP9

root@chromebox:~# snap search alsa-utils
No matching snaps for "alsa-utils"

root@chromebox:~# snap search canonical | grep alsa
root@chromebox:~# 

root@chromebox:~# snap find alsa
Name             Version                      Publisher        Notes  Summary
musescore        3.6.2                        musescore✓       -      Create, play and print beautiful sheet music.
obs-studio       27.0.1                       snapcrafters     -      Free and open source software for live streaming and screen recording
scidvspc-hkvc    svn-3144-20201022            hanishkvc        -      svidvspc - A Powerfull Chess Tookit
gamecake         V21.541+git18.78e5d8d-dirty  xriss            -      a single exe cross platform Lua game engine
sonobus          1.4.5                        sonosaurus       -      SonoBus
subtitle-edit    3.5.13.192                   nzatkovich       -      The subtitle editor :)
dspatcher        1.0                          marcustomlinson  -      Cross-Platform Graphical Tool for DSPatch
wps-2019-snap    11.2.0.9505                  cyrpaut          -      WPS Office 2019 - All languages - No Internet
rtv-lbo          1.21.0                       lbo              -      Browse Reddit from your terminal
mpg123-cm        1.28.2                       cmatsuoka        -      A fast console MPEG audio player
v4l2rtspserver   0.0.8                        ogra             -      RTSP and HTTP camera stream server
v4l2-rtspserver  0+git.d0da079                mpromonet        -      RTSP Server for V4L2 device capture supporting HEVC/H264/JPEG/VP8/VP9

root@chromebox:~# snap find alsa-utils
No matching snaps for "alsa-utils"

# no issues installing the elusive snap..
root@chromebox:~# snap install alsa-utils
alsa-utils 1.1.2-5 from Canonical✓ installed

root@chromebox:~# snap version
snap    2.51.4
snapd   2.51.4
series  16
kernel  5.4.0-81-generic

root@chromebox:~# cat /etc/os-release 
NAME="Ubuntu Core"
VERSION="20"
ID=ubuntu-core
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu Core 20"
VERSION_ID="20"
HOME_URL="https://snapcraft.io/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/snappy/"

roadmr · August 25, 2021, 6:16pm

alas-utils is set to “unlisted”. Unlisted snaps don’t appear in search results but can be accessed and Installed if you know the exact name.

it is not

Daniel

thimslugga · August 25, 2021, 7:00pm

How does one go about finding out if a snap package is set to “unlisted”? Checking the store listing I wasn’t able to find any indicators that the snap is set to “unlisted”.

Is there some kind of public API endpoint that I can query to determine this information myself? Is there also a way to find out the reason surrounding a snap becoming set to “unlisted”?

roadmr · August 25, 2021, 7:25pm

One does not We don’t expose that information via the device-facing API, therefore there’s no way for the web pages to show you listed/unlisted status unless you’re the publisher (which uses a different, authenticated API).

No. A publisher can set their snap’s status to public, unlisted, or fully private - they don’t need to provide a rationale for this, their reasons are their own.

You could try asking the publisher directly, it’s about the only way I can think of.

Daniel

thimslugga · August 25, 2021, 8:57pm

From an end users perspective this only results in me losing faith in the abilities of the snap search functionality and lean towards searching google for “snapcraft” + “” as it’s appears to be more reliable solution. This seems like an odd end user experience for somebody from Canonical to be just be like, “this is okay, working as intended”…

https://www.google.com/search?&q=snapcraft+alsa-utils

A snap “publisher” aka package maintainer is essentially given the liberty to do as they please without any oversight or rationale. This stance signals that Snap is more of a PPA v2.0 (community published repos, will of the maintainer, etc) with downside of fragmenting the package management experience. I myself am leery of PPAs and typically do not use them. Based off your messaging and from my recent Ubuntu Core usage, I’m starting to realize that Ubuntu Core 20 is essentially the equivalent of Ubuntu with + 100 percent PPA in terms of packages with zero alternatives when it comes to package management.

Why did Canonical set the package to unlisted?

James-Carroll · August 25, 2021, 10:10pm

Likely it’s deprecated or maybe even just non-functional and only still there incase there’s legacy users who’s builds/scripts would break if it was inaccessible. I personally wish that more snaps were set to unlisted if they were inactive/faulty, and alsa-utils hasn’t had an update in 4 years.

Does it even work?

thimslugga · August 26, 2021, 12:44am

It works fine with my test hardware, which is a repurposed Dell Chromebox 3010 with Intel 2955U that is flashed with coreboot.