Just a minor niggle here.
I’m using the OS variant to distinguish between various images which have the same base, but are configured in different ways. I’m publishing them through a simplestreams server.
When I do incus image list on a target server which has downloaded and cached an image, I don’t see the variant:
$ incus image list
+-------+--------------+--------+-------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
| ALIAS | FINGERPRINT | PUBLIC | DESCRIPTION | ARCHITECTURE | TYPE | SIZE | UPLOAD DATE |
+-------+--------------+--------+-------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
| | e7a4a6f79003 | no | vtp-gns3 26.08 amd64 (202608101039) | x86_64 | CONTAINER | 415.83MiB | 2026/08/10 10:51 UTC |
+-------+--------------+--------+-------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be a column display option to show the variant (nor the os or release for that matter):
$ incus image list --help
...
Default column layout is: lfpdasu
Column shorthand chars:
l - Shortest image alias (and optionally number of other aliases)
L - Newline-separated list of all image aliases
f - Fingerprint (short)
F - Fingerprint (long)
p - Whether image is public
d - Description
e - Project
a - Architecture
s - Size
u - Upload date
t - Type
I can see it with incus image info of course, but then I have to query each image individually.
$ incus image info e7a4a6f79003
...
Properties:
os: vtp-gns3
release: 26.08
serial: 202608101039
type: tar.gz
variant: cndo
architecture: amd64
description: vtp-gns3 26.08 amd64 (202608101039)
It’s less of a problem on the server where I build the image, because I include the variant as part of the description:
$ incus image list e7a4a6f79003
+---------------+--------------+--------+---------------------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
| ALIAS | FINGERPRINT | PUBLIC | DESCRIPTION | ARCHITECTURE | TYPE | SIZE | UPLOAD DATE |
+---------------+--------------+--------+---------------------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
| cndo (1 more) | e7a4a6f79003 | yes | Virtual Training Platform - cndo (20260810_10:39) | x86_64 | CONTAINER | 415.83MiB | 2026/08/10 10:40 UTC |
+---------------+--------------+--------+---------------------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
However, the description gets stripped when it’s published to simplestreams, and the client synthesizes its own description locally:
$ incus image list nsrc: e7a4a6f79003
+---------------+--------------+--------+-------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
| ALIAS | FINGERPRINT | PUBLIC | DESCRIPTION | ARCHITECTURE | TYPE | SIZE | UPLOAD DATE |
+---------------+--------------+--------+-------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
| cndo (3 more) | e7a4a6f79003 | yes | vtp-gns3 26.08 amd64 (202608101039) | x86_64 | CONTAINER | 415.83MiB | 2026/08/10 00:00 UTC |
+---------------+--------------+--------+-------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
The synthesized description contains the os, release, and architecture, but not the variant.
As you can see, I’ve also put the variant in an alias, but the alias is also lost by the time the image is downloaded and cached.
I’m thinking two things here:
- incus-simplestreams client could include the variant in the “description” that it synthesizes (possibly omitting it if the value is “default”); and/or
incus image listcould have additional column flags for propertiesos,releaseandvariant
What do you think?
P.S. This applies to the official published images too. Simple reproducer:
$ incus create images:ubuntu/26.04 foo
Creating foo
$ incus create images:ubuntu/26.04/cloud bar
Creating bar
$ incus image list
+-------+--------------+--------+----------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
| ALIAS | FINGERPRINT | PUBLIC | DESCRIPTION | ARCHITECTURE | TYPE | SIZE | UPLOAD DATE |
+-------+--------------+--------+----------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
| | 0e40a7057d51 | no | Ubuntu resolute amd64 (20260810_07:42) | x86_64 | CONTAINER | 164.49MiB | 2026/08/10 11:12 UTC |
+-------+--------------+--------+----------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
| | c5b287394c61 | no | Ubuntu resolute amd64 (20260810_07:42) | x86_64 | CONTAINER | 131.45MiB | 2026/08/10 11:12 UTC |
+-------+--------------+--------+----------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+----------------------+
One of those images is the cloud variant, and one the default, but as far as I can see, incus image list can’t produce a listing that distinguishes them.