single-letter snaps are available in the store, but not installable

[Alberto Donato]

I discovered by accident typing about the "q" command, which command-not-found told me I can install via "snap install q".

Running "snap info q" doesn't return a result, though and "snap install q" also fails with

 error: cannot install "q": invalid instance name: invalid snap name: "q"

It seems different restrictions are in place (snapd doesn't suppot single-letter snaps).

Note that I'm reporting this just as I noticed the inconsistent behavior, but it's not really causing an issue for me (I was mostly just curious about that application).

[Kristian Glass (doismellburning)]

Tagged in snapd following discussion with ~pedronis, as "snap info q" returning nothing seems incorrect

[Paweł Stołowski (stolowski)]

You are right, snapd requires at least 2 characters for snap names, this restriction has been implemented long time ago and there are explicit tests for this; so indeed it looks like restrictions in snapd and store are out of sync.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

Do we know why the check is also implemented on the client side? This seems very much like store policy that isn't valuable to check on the client, and the sort of thing that we're probably going to regret in 2030 when we want to change store policy but still have to work with old clients.

[Ian Johnson (anonymouse67)]

`snap download q` works apparently

[Ian Johnson (anonymouse67)]

And actually even installing q_5.snap locally after downloading it doesn't work.