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Diffstat (limited to 'doc/guix.texi')
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1 files changed, 83 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/doc/guix.texi b/doc/guix.texi index 9b2fe3fdb8..0054022fb9 100644 --- a/doc/guix.texi +++ b/doc/guix.texi @@ -34,7 +34,8 @@ Copyright @copyright{} 2017 Clément Lassieur@* Copyright @copyright{} 2017 Mathieu Othacehe@* Copyright @copyright{} 2017 Federico Beffa@* Copyright @copyright{} 2017 Carlo Zancanaro@* -Copyright @copyright{} 2017 Thomas Danckaert +Copyright @copyright{} 2017 Thomas Danckaert@* +Copyright @copyright{} 2017 humanitiesNerd Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or @@ -2879,7 +2880,8 @@ unavailable to the build process, possibly leading to a build failure. Once a package definition is in place, the package may actually be built using the @code{guix build} command-line -tool (@pxref{Invoking guix build}). You can easily jump back to the +tool (@pxref{Invoking guix build}), troubleshooting any build failures +you encounter (@pxref{Debugging Build Failures}). You can easily jump back to the package definition using the @command{guix edit} command (@pxref{Invoking guix edit}). @xref{Packaging Guidelines}, for @@ -4832,6 +4834,7 @@ described in the subsections below. * Common Build Options:: Build options for most commands. * Package Transformation Options:: Creating variants of packages. * Additional Build Options:: Options specific to 'guix build'. +* Debugging Build Failures:: Real life packaging experience @end menu @node Common Build Options @@ -4857,6 +4860,8 @@ the command-line tools. Keep the build tree of failed builds. Thus, if a build fails, its build tree is kept under @file{/tmp}, in a directory whose name is shown at the end of the build log. This is useful when debugging build issues. +@xref{Debugging Build Failures}, for tips and tricks on how to debug +build issues. @item --keep-going @itemx -k @@ -5244,6 +5249,82 @@ https://hydra.gnu.org/log/@dots{}-gdb-7.10 You can freely access a huge library of build logs! @end table +@node Debugging Build Failures +@subsection Debugging Build Failures + +@cindex build failures, debugging +When defining a new package (@pxref{Defining Packages}), you will +probably find yourself spending some time debugging and tweaking the +build until it succeeds. To do that, you need to operate the build +commands yourself in an environment as close as possible to the one the +build daemon uses. + +To that end, the first thing to do is to use the @option{--keep-failed} +or @option{-K} option of @command{guix build}, which will keep the +failed build tree in @file{/tmp} or whatever directory you specified as +@code{TMPDIR} (@pxref{Invoking guix build, @code{--keep-failed}}). + +From there on, you can @command{cd} to the failed build tree and source +the @file{environment-variables} file, which contains all the +environment variable definitions that were in place when the build +failed. So let's say you're debugging a build failure in package +@code{foo}; a typical session would look like this: + +@example +$ guix build foo -K +@dots{} @i{build fails} +$ cd /tmp/guix-build-foo.drv-0 +$ source ./environment-variables +$ cd foo-1.2 +@end example + +Now, you can invoke commands as if you were the daemon (almost) and +troubleshoot your build process. + +Sometimes it happens that, for example, a package's tests pass when you +run them manually but they fail when the daemon runs them. This can +happen because the daemon runs builds in containers where, unlike in our +environment above, network access is missing, @file{/bin/sh} does not +exist, etc. (@pxref{Build Environment Setup}). + +In such cases, you may need to run inspect the build process from within +a container similar to the one the build daemon creates: + +@example +$ guix build -K foo +@dots{} +$ cd /tmp/guix-build-foo.drv-0 +$ guix environment -C foo --ad-hoc strace gdb +[env]# source ./environment-variables +[env]# cd foo-1.2 +@end example + +Here, @command{guix environment -C} creates a container and spawns a new +shell in it (@pxref{Invoking guix environment}). The @command{--ad-hoc +strace gdb} part adds the @command{strace} and @command{gdb} commands to +the container, which would may find handy while debugging. + +To get closer to a container like that used by the build daemon, we can +remove @file{/bin/sh}: + +@example +[env]# rm /bin/sh +@end example + +(Don't worry, this is harmless: this is all happening in the throw-away +container created by @command{guix environment}.) + +The @command{strace} command is probably not in the search path, but we +can run: + +@example +[env]# $GUIX_ENVIRONMENT/bin/strace -f -o log make check +@end example + +In this way, not only you will have reproduced the environment variables +the daemon uses, you will also be running the build process in a container +similar to the one the daemon uses. + @node Invoking guix edit @section Invoking @command{guix edit} |