Snapcraft via LXD failing

I have been successfully using the experiemental method created by @kalikiana of building snaps with lxd using:

export SNAPCRAFT_CONTAINER_BUILDS=1
snapcraft

This has been working perfectly until yesterday (or the day before?).

Now when I build using this method I get an error:

`Could not find a required package in ‘build-packages’: maven

or

`Could not find a required package in ‘build-packages’: ant

Interestingly it seems to randomly alternate between the two.

My snapcraft.yaml is:

---
name: auditor  # you probably want to 'snapcraft register <name>'
version: '0.2'  # just for humans, typically '1.2+git' or '1.3.2'
summary: monitoring and auditing of third party supplied Noojee systems
description: |
  Provider is a webapp designed to monitor/audit
  * Orion Vms and stop/start them when they are not required
  * Cross check DIDs
  * Send out invoice reminders.
  * General service auditing

grade: devel  # must be 'stable' to release into candidate/stable channels
confinement: devmode  # use 'strict' once you have the right plugs and slots

apps:
  tomcat:
    command: tomcat-launch
    daemon: simple
    stop-timeout: 30s
    plugs: [network, network-bind]

  # used to ran the certbot renewal process.
  cron:
    command: cron
    daemon: simple
    plugs: [network, network-bind]

  # You must run getcert after the install to create the certificate.
  getcert:
    command: getcert/getcert
    plugs: [network, network-bind]

parts:
  # build the web app
  auditor-webapp:
    plugin: maven
    source:
      https://xxxxxx@bitbucket.org/sbsutton/auditor.git
    source-type: git
    maven-options:
      [-DskipTests, -Dmaven.test.skip=true, -U]
    stage:
      - -etc/ssl/certs/java/cacerts  # this is also found in tomcat-with-ssl
    organize:
      war/auditor-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war: webapps/ROOT.war
    stage-packages:
      - libc6
    after: [setup-repo, getcert, tomcat-with-ssl]

  # tomcat-with-ssl:
    # ant-options:
      # [-verbose]

I’ve just done an apt upgrade and rebooted my build server but I’m getting the same problem.

running
` snapcraft cleanbuild

on the same server completes without issue (but of course takes a long, long, long time to run).

Any ideas.

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS
Release: 16.04
Codename: xenial

perhaps you now need to set SNAPCRAFT_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT=

see: Call for testing: snapcraft 2.42

are you saying I need to set something

SNAPCRAFT_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT=

or are you saying I need

SNAPCRAFT_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT=lxd

Also I’m running 2.41 not 2.42

And today the problem has gone away???