Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

binary packages install are failing when download method gets source

Open
#367 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
45/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
r
Domain
tooling

Research direction

Reproduce the failure with the R example using pkgdepends::new_pkg_installation_proposal, then inspect the download and installation paths named in the report, especially pkgcache::download_one_of and install-binary.R. Check how ip$download() passes a selected source into ip$install() and use the reported backtrace as the starting point. Done means installation no longer fails when a non-binary archive is selected, with coverage for the Archive-source scenario.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

bug

ip$install() call fails on verifying the binary package after the installation proposal download call (see below for an example)

  • Fail is random, as it may use the resolution$sources item that is not Archive most of the time
  • Fail sometimes happens if non-archive source is downloaded
    • can be mitigated with another download

This was detected when installing insightsengineering/teal.modules.clinical with 2 problematic binary packages nloptr and urltools (using ppm snapshot or latest).

  • Is there an option to disable resolving the Archive URL?
    • doesn't happen only on Archive URL (however, this one always downloads source packages)
  • Could the method fall back to installing a source package or re-downloading again?
Reproducible example

note: I think this results from a race condition when downloading the file with pkgcache::download_one_of(...) and it downloads a source archive.

config <- list(
  cran_mirror = "https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/__linux__/noble/2024-04-19", 
  library = tempfile()
)

ip <- pkgdepends::new_pkg_installation_proposal("tern", config = config)

ip$solve()

res <- ip$get_resolution()

# Keep only Archive sources (force failure)
new_sources <- lapply(
  res$sources,
  function(x) {
    if (length(x) > 1 && any(grepl("src/contrib/Archive", x))) {
      x[grepl("src/contrib/Archive", x)]
    } else {
      x
    }
  }
)

ip$.__enclos_env__$private$plan$.__enclos_env__$private$resolution$result$sources <- new_sources

ip$download()
ip$install()
.Last.error
#> <install_input_error/rlib_error_3_0/rlib_error/error>
#> Error in `verify_extracted_package(filename, pkg_cache)` at install-binary.R:5:3:
#> ! 
#> /tmp/Rtmpaxpmb1/file4cf621cf4b41/src/contrib/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-ubuntu-24.04/4.4/nloptr_2.0.3.tar.gz
#> is not a valid binary, it is missing nloptr/Meta/package.rds.
#> ---
#> Backtrace:
#>  1. ip$install()
#>  2. pkgdepends::install_package_plan(plan, lib = private$library, num_workers = nw, … at pkg-installation.R:466:7
#>  3. base::withCallingHandlers({ … at install-plan.R:107:3
#>  4. pkgdepends:::handle_events(state, events) at install-plan.R:120:7
#>  5. pkgdepends:::handle_event(state, i) at install-plan.R:210:3
#>  6. proc$get_result() at install-plan.R:239:3
#>  7. processx:::process_get_result(self, private) at process.R:576:18
#>  8. private$post_process() at process.R:784:5
#>  9. pkgdepends:::install_extracted_binary(filename, lib_cache, pkg_cache, lib, … at install-binary.R:140:4
#> 10. pkgdepends:::verify_extracted_package(filename, pkg_cache) at install-binary.R:5:3
#> 11. pkgdepends:::throw(pkg_error("{.path {filename}} is not a valid binary, it is missing {miss}."… at install-verify-binary.R:30:5
Dominant language
C
Stars
135
Forks
47
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Getting set up

This project ships no dev container, Dockerfile or contributing guide, so setting up is up to you: start from its README, and see our first-contribution guide for the general steps.

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from r-lib/pkgdepends

All issues in r-lib/pkgdepends

Similar issues

More C issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.