Windows/Aarch64 pacman getting stuck randomly
Environment/Versions
- GIMP version: master (CI)
- Operating System: Windows/Aarch64
Description of the bug
Jobs regularly get stuck on pacman --noconfirm -S --needed [various packages]
(installation of needed dependencies) in our various Windows script.
It looks like the problem happens in particular when it is preceded by a pacman --noconfirm -Suy
(package database synchronization).
The issue is tracked on MSYS2 project by this report: https://github.com/msys2/MSYS2-packages/issues/4340
We kinda avoid the problem as much as possible by not updating the package DB in our CI jobs (see !1328 (merged)), only for Aarch64 (I have read something which suggested that maybe the problem is not specific to Aarch64, but simply something makes it be much more common on this architecture). See also #10729 (closed) where this issue was discussed when we got new runners.
Instead we are going to try and have runner admins update the package DB as an external process (see: #10729 (comment 2004184)).
I open this report to keep track of this issue on our side too, even though we likely can't do much more about it ourselves.
Reproduction
Is the bug reproducible? Randomly but very often
Reproduction steps:
- Call
pacman --noconfirm -Suy
- Call
pacman --noconfirm -S --needed [list of dependencies]
Expected result: package DB is updated, then dependencies are installed.
Actual result: the second command very often hangs infinitely (until CI times out).
Note: these are reproduction steps for the CI. I'm unsure about doing this locally (apparently the hang happens less often) and I can't test myself as I have no such hardware.