snap install --revision tracks stable by default

[Greg Lutostanski]

When I specifically install a revision for testing I would like to keep that revision until I want to switch it. I can't pin to that revision as the next refresh will pull from stable.

Example:
$ snap install etcd --revision=48
$ snap info etcd
name: etcd
summary: "Resilient key-value store by CoreOS"
publisher: canonical
contact: <email address hidden>
description: |
  Etcd is a high availability key-value store, implementing the RAFT
  algorithm to deal with failover within the etcd cluster. Popular
  in the Docker community as a shared store of small but important
  data in a distributed application.

commands:
  - etcd.etcdctl (etcdctl)
tracking: stable
installed: 3.1+master (48) 10MB -
refreshed: 2017-04-01 13:54:44 -0500 CDT
channels:
  stable: 3.1.3 (41) 7MB -
  candidate: 3.1.5 (46) 7MB -
  beta: 3.1.5 (46) 7MB -
  edge: 3.1+master (48) 10MB -

Where it shows "tracking: stable" I specifically do not want to track stable at all, and on a snap refresh it will go to the latest stable without intervention. This is not what I would expect.

Is there a way to pin without refreshing from a channel? (I would expect revision to do this if no channel is given on the commandline).

[Zygmunt Krynicki (zyga)]

I don't believe there is a way to do what you want right now. There's no way to not follow any channel or any track in the store.

I'm marking this as confirmed / medium for further analysis in another pass.

[Andrew Scribner (ca-scribner)]

I recently ran into this. Used `snap install microk8s --revision 4891` to install a specific revision from the 1.24/edge channel, but a few hours later I was updated to a revision from a different channel. Now that I know this happened, I know I could have used `snap refresh hold` to hold the refresh, but the default behaviour here feels out of place. Perhaps installing to a revision should by default hold refreshing?