bug#45574: Guile 3 fails to build non-deterministically

bug#45574: Guile 3 fails to build non-deterministically

[Chris Marusich]

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Hi,

If you try to build Guile 3 without substitutes using any recent version
of Guix, it can frequently fail.  I had to try about 12 times
in a row before it succeeded.  The failure simply said "FAIL:
check-guile" - I didn't save the build logs, which were lost once the
build succeeded.  If anyone is interested in debugging, it should be
easy to reproduce.  Just do this:

- Run Guix in a 1-core VM or a similarly slow x86_64-linux system.

- Try to build any recent version of Guile 3 using any recent version of
  Guix.

I've seen the failures happen for Guile 3.0.2 and Guile 3.0.4.  I
observed this on a 1-core VM, so perhaps a slow system exacerbates this
bug.  This can make running "guix pull" without substitutes tedious,
since you have to manually retry many times.

-- 
Chris

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bug#45574: Guile 3 fails to build non-deterministically

[Mathieu Othacehe]

Hello Chris,

> If you try to build Guile 3 without substitutes using any recent version
> of Guix, it can frequently fail.  I had to try about 12 times
> in a row before it succeeded.  The failure simply said "FAIL:
> check-guile" - I didn't save the build logs, which were lost once the
> build succeeded.  If anyone is interested in debugging, it should be
> easy to reproduce.  Just do this:

I investigated those failures yesterday. I think they are caused by:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-guile/2020-09/msg00012.html.

Let's see if the fix proposed by Rob can be merged in Guile.

Thanks,

Mathieu

bug#45574: Guile 3 fails to build non-deterministically

[Ludovic Courtès]

Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com> skribis:

> If you try to build Guile 3 without substitutes using any recent version
> of Guix, it can frequently fail.  I had to try about 12 times
> in a row before it succeeded.  The failure simply said "FAIL:
> check-guile" - I didn't save the build logs, which were lost once the
> build succeeded.  If anyone is interested in debugging, it should be
> easy to reproduce.  Just do this:
>
> - Run Guix in a 1-core VM or a similarly slow x86_64-linux system.
>
> - Try to build any recent version of Guile 3 using any recent version of
>   Guix.
>
> I've seen the failures happen for Guile 3.0.2 and Guile 3.0.4.  I
> observed this on a 1-core VM, so perhaps a slow system exacerbates this
> bug.  This can make running "guix pull" without substitutes tedious,
> since you have to manually retry many times.

I don’t think that applies to 3.0.9, or at least I haven’t seen any such
failures or reports thereof.  Closing!

Ludo’.