“Snap account-id” caption contradicts itself

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On <https://dashboard.snapcraft.io/dev/account/>, the “Snap account-id” field has a caption that reads: “Your snap account-id, used as a unique reference to this account. It is automatically generated as you interact with the Store and will never change.”

That can’t possibly be true. If it will never change, then it isn’t generated as I interact with the Store: it was generated already.

[Bret Barker (noise)]

Matthew - could you propose new wording please?

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

To propose new wording I’d want to know:
- whether bug 1746575 will be fixed by converting the field into static text
- exactly when the account ID changes, if ever
- who uses it as “as a unique reference to this account”, and when.

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

1- Bug 1746575 is Fixed (per its status Fix Released)
2- it never changes.
3- it's used in several places, I would suggest reading https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MOwyQXkrmMjTJnMsiisfv5Y1lrr5mwNrTxaIbMpNngc/edit# which has more details on how/where the account-id is used in assertions mostly; from the developer's perspective, it's not commonly used. Examples include: being added as a collaborator via assertions, setting up a brand store, and signing user-generated assertions. In many of these cases the account-id is handled implicitly by the tooling, so even here, the user doesn't typically need to directly use it.

"It is automatically generated as you interact with the Store and will never change" is true. Once generated it will never change, but it needs to be generated at some point, and this point is determined by several factors. Typically it's generated when a developer accepts the developer terms of service, but it can happen as part of other operations; for instance, for historical reasons a developer may have accepted the terms of service in the past but not have an account-id. In that case, it'll be generated when needed (examples include registering a new snap name, or being added as a collaborator to an existing snap).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Snap Store because there has been no activity for 60 days.]