From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Ludovic =?UTF-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?= <ludo@gnu.org>
Subject: bug#35660: guix weather runaway memory consumption
Date: Tue, 14 May 2019 22:52:31 +0200
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References: <20190509224044.60b37e3f@scratchpost.org> <87ftpiozfl.fsf@gnu.org>
	<20190513232558.22b4afc0@scratchpost.org>
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To: Danny Milosavljevic <dannym@scratchpost.org>
Cc: 35660@debbugs.gnu.org

Hi Danny,

Danny Milosavljevic <dannym@scratchpost.org> skribis:

> The failure mode here is very very bad.  Guix will consume all available
> memory and then start on the swap, at which point the computer will
> become unresponsive to any input and the user can't save any open
> documents and has to kill the power to the computer.

I agree that the failure mode is terrible.  It=E2=80=99s very likely a cycl=
e in
the package graph, given the symptoms you describe.  So =E2=80=98guix build
OFFENDING-PACKAGE=E2=80=99 would probably give you the same result.

Chris Baines proposed a patch a while back to detect and report cycles,
but we never got around to polishing and integrating it.  That would
probably help a lot in these cases.

We can open a new bug for that (if there=E2=80=99s not already one), but I =
think
it should be framed in terms of cycle detection in the package graph and
error reporting.

Thanks,
Ludo=E2=80=99.