guix command line behavior upon network failure or package build failure

guix command line behavior upon network failure or package build failure

[Andy Tai]

The user facing guix command has two modes of failure as I have seen,
when doing "guix upgrade" or "guix package -u":

1. if when downloading substitutes, if downloading fails due to
network conditions, the whole command errors out (exits)

2. if some software has to be built locally, and if the build fails,
the whole command errors out (exits)

is it possible to have the guix command keeps going and finishes other
works that may be unrelated to the failure, and finally prints out
messages about the packages that failed to update?    This would be
more user friendly and makes guix more usable for end users. Thanks

Re: guix command line behavior upon network failure or package build failure

[Julien Lepiller]

Failing earlier might still be friendlier, as guix will not be working for nothing. When guix upgrade fails, nothing is upgraded, after all.

Guix has the --keep-going option you can use to continue downloading/building packages unrelated to the failure.

Le 16 avril 2023 08:48:41 GMT+02:00, Andy Tai <atai@atai.org> a écrit :
>The user facing guix command has two modes of failure as I have seen,
>when doing "guix upgrade" or "guix package -u":
>
>1. if when downloading substitutes, if downloading fails due to
>network conditions, the whole command errors out (exits)
>
>2. if some software has to be built locally, and if the build fails,
>the whole command errors out (exits)
>
>is it possible to have the guix command keeps going and finishes other
>works that may be unrelated to the failure, and finally prints out
>messages about the packages that failed to update?    This would be
>more user friendly and makes guix more usable for end users. Thanks
>

Re: guix command line behavior upon network failure or package build failure

[Csepp]

Might also make sense to keep retrying.  When downloading fails, proceed
to a derivation that needs to be built locally, and maybe when a local
build fails, try to see if the substitute server built it in the
meantime, and just download that.

On lower end machines with slow disks, having to re-run the derivation
computations is a pretty big problem, this would eliminate one cause of
it.

Julien Lepiller <julien@lepiller.eu> writes:

> Failing earlier might still be friendlier, as guix will not be working for nothing. When guix upgrade fails, nothing is upgraded, after all.
>
> Guix has the --keep-going option you can use to continue downloading/building packages unrelated to the failure.
>
> Le 16 avril 2023 08:48:41 GMT+02:00, Andy Tai <atai@atai.org> a écrit :
>>The user facing guix command has two modes of failure as I have seen,
>>when doing "guix upgrade" or "guix package -u":
>>
>>1. if when downloading substitutes, if downloading fails due to
>>network conditions, the whole command errors out (exits)
>>
>>2. if some software has to be built locally, and if the build fails,
>>the whole command errors out (exits)
>>
>>is it possible to have the guix command keeps going and finishes other
>>works that may be unrelated to the failure, and finally prints out
>>messages about the packages that failed to update?    This would be
>>more user friendly and makes guix more usable for end users. Thanks
>>