"Connecting eligible plugs" is actually downloading more stuff

[Nathan Teodosio]

I noticed that when I try to install a snap which has dependencies I'm missing, Snapd will briefly say something along the lines of "downloading <dependency-name>" (just as in the download phase of the actual target snap). However, that line will be promptly overwritten by "connecting eligible plugs and slots".

If one has a fast Internet connection, maybe not a detectable problem. For people like me who do not, it is quite misleading because that could take hours (justifying articles such as [1]) and we would be none the wiser about the actual issue were it not for some kind of network monitor or this error I eventually got:

  error: cannot perform the following tasks:
  - Download snap "gnome-3-28-1804" (198) from channel "stable" (download too slow: 0.00 bytes/sec)
  - Download snap "gtk-common-themes" (1535) from channel "stable" (download too slow: 0.00 bytes/sec)

I believe the expected behavior is that stderr reports the ongoing download.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240303160236/https://devicetests.com/why-does-connecting-eligible-plugs-and-slots-of-snap-packages-take-so-long