snap install without devmode claims it doesn't exist

[Cris Dywan]

I ran into a very confusing behavior repeatedly without realizing it previously.

$ snap install SNAP --edge
error: cannot install "SNAP": snap not found

$ snap install SNAP --edge --devmode
SNAP 315.92 MB / 365.33 MB [============>--] 86.48% 2.53 MB/s 19s

See the difference? Same snap, first attempt without devmode. Looks convincingly like the snap is not in the store at all.

[John Lenton (chipaca)]

I'm not sure this is a bug; I'd have to look in the UX document.

While I do, the reason this might not be a bug is that installing with --devmode is a dangerous thing that you should really not be doing without good reason. Any error message that tells the user to "add --devmode" is encouraging bad behaviour.

[John Lenton (chipaca)]

UX document says that installation needs to advise of the existence of --devmode, and installing with --devmode needs to prompt with a warning unless the developer is completely trusted.

Without the two second bits of this the first can't be implemented, however, which is why we're at.

So, this is blocked by:

 * server-side "channel map" support
 * confirmation step for --devmode
 * per-dev explicit blind trust

HTH,

[Gustavo Niemeyer (niemeyer)]

Recommending --devmode sounds bogus, as we discussed today in the call. If we advise people to use the flag, the purpose of requiring the flag disappears since users will start to blindly do whatever necessary to make it work, without realizing why.

We should instead say something like:

    error: snap still in development and cannot be securely confined

Note that the cases where people are using devmode to avoid confinement will hopefully disappear with the existence of classic mode.