UX is confusing when snap is auto-refreshing
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
snapd |
New
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
I saw that the discord icon was no longer in my start menu (XFCE), so I went to the console and had this exchange:
$ sudo snap refresh discord
error: cannot refresh "discord": refreshing disabled snap "discord" not supported
$ sudo snap install discord
snap "discord" is already installed, see 'snap help refresh'
$ sudo snap remove discord
error: snap "discord" has "auto-refresh" change in progress
$ sudo snap refresh discord
error: cannot refresh "discord": refreshing disabled snap "discord" not supported
$ sudo snap enable discord
error: snap "discord" has "auto-refresh" change in progress
$ sudo snap install discord
snap "discord" is already installed, see 'snap help refresh'
Apparently, what it was trying to tell me was that it was already doing the update, but I thought it was in an inconsistent state because its response to "refresh", "install", and "enable" all seemed to indicate different things. Soon after this, I got an inotify that discord had just updated, so I guess the state wasn't inconsistent: It was doing an auto refresh. It just wasn't very good at communicating that to me. I had to put it back onto the start menu myself, though.
This UX bug has bothered me for a while, especially as someone who follows the `edge` channel of many snaps (partially because I maintain several snaps, and partially for the purpose of catching bugs before the general public).
If a `refresh` or `auto-refresh` change is already in progress for a snap, I would expect `snap refresh` to find the ongoing refresh change and simply `watch` it.