Hi,

Christopher Baines <mail@cbaines.net> skribis:

> Currently, if you attempt to run the derivation checker on all packages, the
> Guile process will run out of memory. I think a contributing factor to this is
> that the checker forces an inefficient order when you want to generate
> derivations for all the supported systems of each package, constantly
> switching system then package.
>
> This problem also impacts the Guix Data Service, since it tries to run the
> derivation checker for all packages.
>
> The changes in this commit to split the derivation lint checker in to several,
> one for each system, means that you can now treat each system separately,
> which should be better for caching purposes.
>
> If it's desirable to keep some notion of checking all supported systems for a
> single package, I think lint checker groups could be added, so that you could
> ask for the "derivation" checker, and this would run all the derivation
> checkers.

The ‘derivation’ checker was added for this purpose: making sure that a
package’s derivation can be computed for all the supported systems.
Previously it was easy to overlook that kind of breakage.

I think it’s important to keep a ‘derivation’ checker that does this.


Now, the memory consumption you report is unacceptable and this needs to
be addressed.

Most (all?) caches are now per-session (associated with
<store-connection>).  Since ‘guix lint’ uses a single session, those
caches keep growing because there’s no eviction mechanism in place.

A hack like the one below should work around that.  Could you check how
well it works for you? It can also be helpful to set:

  GUIX_PROFILING=gc GUIX_PROFILING_EVENTS=after-gc

Longer-term we should have a proper cache eviction mechanism in place.
It’s not been a priority because “normal” applications such as ‘guix
package’ don’t need it.

Thanks,
Ludo’.