“snap find” returns confusing results

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

 😌 14:21:44@~> snap find
Name Version Developer Notes Summary
docker 17.03.1-ce-1 docker-inc - The docker app deployment mechanism
lxd 2.14 canonical - System container manager and API
nextcloud 11.0.3snap5 nextcloud - Nextcloud Server
hugo 0.24.1 hugo-authors - Fast and Flexible Static Site Generator
 😌 14:24:07@~>

I don’t understand this output at all.

- It isn’t instructions on how to use the find command.

- It isn’t search results — or if it is, I don’t understand why searching for nothing returns these four snaps in particular.

- It isn’t a complete list of available snaps — or if it is, it’s extremely short.

- It isn’t a set of examples — or if it is, I don’t know why it’s the same every time, even when I have one of those snaps installed already.

[Bret Barker (noise)]

`snap find` without any arguments returns the global featured set of snaps, by design. I agree that it isn't very clear, and could certainly provide some guidance on browsing sections.

[Kit Randel (blr)]

Possibly snapd could render a heading of some sort explaining that these are featured snaps.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

... and a footer with suggestions for how to use 'snap find' for more
granular searches.

Mark

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

I pushed a PR here: https://github.com/snapcore/snapd/pull/4382 - happy to improve the header/footer wording as appropriate.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

Bug exists in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, 17.10 and 18.04 LTS.

Seems to be a feature, not bug:

xenial@xenial-vb:~/snapd-2.29.4.2/packaging/ubuntu-16.04/tmp/usr/share/gocode/src/github.com/snapcore/snapd/cmd/snap$ cat cmd_find.go | grep -A4 "snap find"

 // magic! `snap find` returns the featured snaps
 if x.Positional.Query == "" && x.Section == "" {
  x.Section = "featured"
 }

But, please inform users that `snap find` shows only `featured` snaps.

And allow to show all available snaps with indication of its sources/sections/channels.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

not an issue for the snap DNA sequencer package ... closing

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

Oliver, how kindly you are. Thank you :)