Subject: Re: bug#28522: Cannot upgrade due to "guix pull" errors

From: Ben Sturmfels <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2017 14:38:10 +1000

Hi Adam,

On 20/09/17 13:08, Adam Bolte wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> I'm running Guix 0.10.0 on a Debian stretch box, and I'd like to
> upgrade. The box had not been booted for quite some time, hence the
> version is somewhat old.
> 
> Running `guix pull`, I get the following:
> 
> 
> Starting download of /tmp/guix-file.k6X14m
> From http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/snapshot/master.tar.gz...
>  master.tar.gz                              628KiB/s 00:22 | 13.6MiB transferred
> unpacking '/gnu/store/i17ynp73h182q1n72a6nqsyxk32fkhhr-guix-latest.tar.gz'...
> Your installation is too old and lacks a 'guile2.0-git' package.
> Please upgrade to an intermediate version first, for instance with:
> 
>   guix pull --url=https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/snapshot/v0.13.0.tar.gz

It looks as though your system is attempting to download and build boost
1.60.0, but both Guix's binary substitute and the original source for
the version are no longer available. Given v0.13.0 is the latest
release, it's a shame if that binary substitute of boost is no longer
available. Not sure why the source would have disappeared.

There is nearly always a way to work around for issues like this, but
given how old your install is, I think you'll save a lot of time by just
reinstalling. There have been quite few breaking changes in the last
year that may catch you even if you do resolve the above issue
(guix-daemon upgrade, Guile upgrade).

> Some places I have found mention the `--fallback` argument, but this
> feature isn't included in the version I am upgrading from.
> 
> $ guix pull --fallback
> warning: failed to install locale: Invalid argument
> guix pull: error: fallback: unrecognized option

For what it's worth, guix is already falling back to fetching the source
from Sourceforge, so I don't think this flag would help you anyway.

Cheers,
Ben