behavior of guix package -k -u on substitute download failure or build failure

behavior of guix package -k -u on substitute download failure or build failure

[Andy Tai]

Hi, sorry if I misunderstand any concept in this mail,

from previous messages I believe that the behavior of a user doing

guix package -k -u

if any failure occurs (network failure downloading substitutes or
local build failure)

the local builds of other packages may proceed to completion, but no
package upgrade occurs at all.   I guess this is for the reason of
transaction integrity, that guix upgrades all packages eligible to be
upgraded in this instance, either all of them or none of them.

In normal usage, it may commonly be the intention of the user just to
get package updates, not necessarily needing to have these packages
upgraded in one step.   Thus is is possible to have a command line
switch to have guix package to just upgrade the packages that can be
successfully upgraded, even if some other packages may not be upgraded
due to some failure, thus breaking the transaction semantics but the
user does not mind?

for example, today my attempt at package upgrade failed at building
python-pyopengl-accelerate  but I don't really mind gtk programs
unrelated to python to be upgraded

Re: behavior of guix package -k -u on substitute download failure or build failure

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On Fri, 28 Apr 2023 at 13:11, Andy Tai <atai@atai.org> wrote:

> if any failure occurs (network failure downloading substitutes or
> local build failure)

I agree and me too I am also confused.  When I run “guix build -k”, I am
expecting that Guix will build all it can.  And that’s not the case:
sometimes Guix stops because some network failures.  Sometimes because
some building failures.  And sometimes, I have to relaunch the command
adding the option “--fallback” or “--no-substitute”.

Since these kind of errors are hard to reproduce, then it is hard to
report an issue. :-)

Well, somehow it is about the guix-daemon and the way the queue of store
items is processed, I guess.

Bah, nothing to propose.  Only another feedback about the annoyance. :-)

Cheers,
simon