Subject: Re: bug#22740: Freshness check blocks upgrading

From: [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès)
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 22:16:13 +0100

Alex Kost <[email-masked]> skribis:

> Andreas Enge (2016-02-19 20:12 +0300) wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> when upgrading packages, there is a check for new GNU releases.
>> In the presence of network problems preventing to reach the corresponding
>> servers, the command "guix package -u" hangs indefinitely.
>>
>> It would be nice to add a (short) time-out to the procedure looking
>> for updates, or better yet, to add a command line flag to turn it off:
>> Even when the servers are reachable, checking for new versions takes
>> a considerable amount of time that can be saved in many circumstances.
>>
>> Personally, I would not even mind turning this feature off completely;
>
> I totally agree with this!  I didn't like it since the very beginning.

I agree.  I implemented it mostly for the fun of it and to demonstrate
that we could possibly do “clever” things with access to high-level
package objects (the command could automatically offer to use the new
source instead of the old one), but in practice it’s been largely
annoying.

Ludo’, waiting for the patch that removes it.  :-)