Subject: bug#57559: guix pull fails on http status code 503

From: Maxime Devos <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2022 11:23:28 +0200

On 08-09-2022 09:25, zimoun wrote:
> My point is that ’Guix is unavailable’ is special and it appears to me
> expected to raise an error.  Other said,
>
>   1. if %default-guix-channel (or its mirrors) is unreachable,
>      then stop the pull; as it is currently done.
>   2. if an extra channel is unreachable,
>      then keep the last local revision of this channel
>      and try the others.
>
> For sure, #2 can break the whole pull if something in the Guix channel
> changed*and*  the channel depends on this something.  But we cannot do
> more than raise an error.
Looking at 'latest-channel-instances', the code for deciding what the
latest version is, is the same for the guix channel and any other
channel.  As such, the 'Guix is unavailable' is, currently, not special.

I suppose we could special-case it in latest-channel-instances to raise
an error when Guix is unavailable, but I don't see why -- sometimes
Savannah is down, would be nice to then at least be able to update
the other channels.

Greetings,
Maxime.