Select a build provider

Depending on the core version and platform, there are different default build providers and multiple ways to change providers. The following tables are ranked by precedence across cores, so for example a provider chosen by the first method overrides the second and third method, and so on.

Consult the following tables for different methods of overriding the build provider.

core22 and higher override methods

For core22 and higher, LXD is the default provider on Linux, and Multipass is the default on macOS and Windows.

Provider override for core22 and higher	Priority	Command
Command-line argument	1	--use-lxd
Environmental variable	2	SNAPCRAFT_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT=<provider-name>
Snap configuration of Snapcraft	3	snap set snapcraft provider=<provider-name>

core20 override methods

For core20, Multipass is the default provider on all platforms.

Provider override for core20	Priority	Command
Command-line argument	1	--provider=<provider-name>
Environmental variable	2	SNAPCRAFT_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT=<provider-name>
Command-line argument	3	--use-lxd
Snap configuration of Snapcraft	4	snap set snapcraft provider=<provider-name>

Select through the snap configuration

The snap configuration method mentioned in the previous sections is a feature of snapd.

Like most snaps, Snapcraft isn’t installed with any default configuration values. As a result, you won’t be able to check the provider programmatically if you haven’t already set it on the system.

To set the provider, run:

snap set snapcraft provider=<provider-name>

Where <provider-name> can be lxd or multipass.

To check the provider after it’s been set, run:

snap get snapcraft provider

To unset the provider, run:

snap unset snapcraft provider