Today I tried to use intellij-idea for the first time for a few weeks. It tells me that there are updates in snap. There was also a compile error (but this may or may not have been my error).

I have tried to update, but no luck. Here is what I have tried.

#↳ sudo snap refresh All snaps up to date. #↳ snap list Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes core 9993 latest canonical✓ broken core18 1885 latest canonical✓ broken gtk-common-themes 1506 latest canonical✓ broken intellij-idea-community 2020.2.3 257 latest jetbrains✓ classic kotlin 53 latest jetbrains✓ broken #↳ snap list --all Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes core 9993 latest canonical✓ broken core 9804 latest canonical✓ disabled,broken core18 1885 latest canonical✓ broken gtk-common-themes 1506 latest canonical✓ broken intellij-idea-community 249 latest jetbrains✓ disabled,broken intellij-idea-community 252 latest jetbrains✓ disabled,broken intellij-idea-community 2020.2.3 257 latest jetbrains✓ classic kotlin 50 latest jetbrains✓ disabled,broken kotlin 53 latest jetbrains✓ broken 

As you can see snap is telling be that it is broken. What is broken? Did it update to broken code? Why will it not update, when intellij-idea is telling be that there is an update?

2 Answers

What I did to fix it.

I still have no idea what is wrong with snap, but this work around worked for me.

Remove all packages

for package_name in … do sudo snap remove $package_name done 

Re-install packages

for package_name in … do sudo snap install $package_name done 

Replace the ellipses as appropriate.

Sometimes snaps fail to mount. systemctl --failed shows failed ones. Need to start them via systemctl start <...> then reconnect the failed snap packages via snap disable <pkg> then snap enable <pkg>. snap revert <pkg>/snap refresh <pkg> also fix failed snap packages. Reinstall works for sure, but there is a shorter way.

Here is the script to fix that:

#!/bin/sh set -x alwaysfix=chromium [ -z "$1" ] || alwaysfix="$1" tofix="`snap list | awk '/broken/{print $1}'`" for t in `COLUMNS=1000 systemctl --failed | awk '/snap.+mount/{print $1}'`; do systemctl start "$t" done for s in $tofix; do snap disable "$s" snap enable "$s" done for s in $alwaysfix; do snap disable "$s" snap enable "$s" done