[setup-r] Ghostscript and/or qpdf installation error on Windows

[MichaelChirico]

I am trying to activate a Windows runner for data.table (Rdatatable/data.table#6022) but 2 of 3 runs I've tried so far failed at the setup-r phase (example failure; associated config):

Error: Failed to get R release: Failed to get qpdf and ghostscript in 10 tries :(

Poking around for how this error has been resolved elsewhere did not turn up much:

• qpdf install fails on Windows #395
• https://forum.posit.co/t/windows-unable-to-find-ghostscript-in-r-lib-actions-check-r-package/141194
• https://forum.posit.co/t/qpdf-is-needed-error-package/75485/8

The only thing that sticks out to me as different for our setup vs. e.g. that of {lintr} which I'm more familiar with is this setup-pandoc step. And indeed after adding that step my pipeline passed, making me wonder if this step is recommended for Windows.

This is somewhere between a bug report and a documentation request -- if adding setup-pandoc is really the right fix, it would be nice for it to be documented somewhere; if this apparent relationship to setup-pandoc is spurious, it would be nice to get a recommended fix to stabilize the windows check.

[gaborcsardi]

This was an error in the chocolatey repo where we install ghostscript and qpdf from. It seems to be fixed already. [1] It has nothing to do with setup-pandoc.

[1] https://github.com/r-lib/actions/actions/runs/8358418322/job/23043762630#step:4:42

[gaborcsardi]

Ah, now it is failing with

ghostscript not installed. The package was not found with the source(s) listed.
 Source(s): 'https://community.chocolatey.org/api/v2/'
 NOTE: When you specify explicit sources, it overrides default sources.
If the package version is a prerelease and you didn't specify `--pre`,
 the package may not be found.
Please see https://docs.chocolatey.org/en-us/troubleshooting for more
 assistance.

https://github.com/r-lib/callr/actions/runs/8417567882/job/23046294770#step:4:19

This sucks, because while ghostscript provides a windows installer (https://github.com/ArtifexSoftware/ghostpdl-downloads/releases), it does not work non-interactively:
https://artifex.com/news/ghostscript-10.01.0-disabling-silent-install-option

We could put the Ghostscript.app choco package into a GH release, and download and install it manually, I guess. It also needs that autohotkey.portable package. Installation goes like this:

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://community.chocolatey.org/api/v2/package/Ghostscript.app -outfile Ghostscript.app.nupkg
choco install Ghostscript.app -source .

(First the same for autohotkey.portable.)

Check installation:

❯ where.exe gswin64c
C:\Program Files\gs\gs10.03.0\bin\gswin64c.exe

[gaborcsardi]

Btw. qpdf is included in Rtools43 (possible Rtools42 as well), so we don't need to download that for newer R versions.

[cderv]

It seems an issue with choco service - we install R on several runners for Quarto and it only fails for some
https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/actions/runs/8417921833/job/23047356466

Though there is a retry mechanism and it fails all the tries.

This sucks, because while ghostscript provides a windows installer (ArtifexSoftware/ghostpdl-downloads/releases), it does not work non-interactively:
artifex.com/news/ghostscript-10.01.0-disabling-silent-install-option

About this, I do understand the .exe file could be extracted as an archive and then the bin and lib folder added to PATH.
This is how the installation with "Scoop" windows package manager works.

[gaborcsardi]

About this, I do understand the .exe file could be extracted as an archive and then the bin and lib folder added to PATH.

Possibly, with 7zip, but the installer also creates some registry entries. So I think it is cleaner to put the choco package (and its single dependency) to GH releases and then download and install them manually with choco.

[cderv]

but the installer also creates some registry entries

Yes I saw that. "Scoop" manifest did add some manual registry addition following the 10.01.0 update
https://github.com/ScoopInstaller/Main/blob/f612116c30348f0624ffe50ae8951336bcfcef7c/bucket/ghostscript.json#L35-L53

So I think it is cleaner to put the choco package (and its single dependency) to GH releases and then download and install them manually with choco.

It would indeed work if they maintain their choco app.

It seems the issue is happening from time to time. The previously failed job are working currently

[gaborcsardi]

It would indeed work if they maintain their choco app.

We would download the choco package and put it on GH releases. I doubt that we would need to update it frequently.

And we are already doing this, we might as well do it for qpdf.

[gaborcsardi]

This should be fixed now in @v2. Please let me know if you still see issues.

[cderv]

Just to share I got this error with new workflow today

Error while running 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\Ghostscript.app\tools\ChocolateyInstall.ps1'.
   See log for details.
  Unable to move directory 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\Ghostscript.app':
   (5) Access is denied: [\\?\C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib-bad\Ghostscript.app\10.3.0]
  Retrying by moving individual files
  Unable to move file 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\Ghostscript.app\tools\gs10030w64.exe':
   (32) The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process: [\\?\C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib-bad\Ghostscript.app\10.3.0\tools\gs10030w64.exe]

I'll see if this will happen again or not.

[gaborcsardi]

@cderv can you show the workflow and the workflow run?

[cderv]

This was here: https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/actions/runs/8457845577/job/23170802370?pr=9206#step:4:84
Re-run failed job solved it so it was not persistent

[gaborcsardi]

Thanks, for the record, there is this:

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 20:06:38 GMT  Installing 64 bit version
Wed, 27 Mar 2024 20:06:38 GMT  Installing Ghostscript.app...
Wed, 27 Mar 2024 20:51:37 GMT  Chocolatey timed out waiting for the command to finish. The timeout 
Wed, 27 Mar 2024 20:51:37 GMT   specified (or the default value) was '2700' seconds. Perhaps try a
Wed, 27 Mar 2024 20:51:37 GMT   higher `--execution-timeout`? See `choco -h` for details.

so I suspect that something happened during the ghostscript install, probably an interactive prompt.

And that also made the whole step stuck:

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 20:51:53 GMT  Error: Failed to get R 4.3.2: Failed to get qpdf and ghostscript.
Thu, 28 Mar 2024 01:58:00 GMT  Error: The operation was canceled.

On the one hand, this is not great. On the other hand, if it happened with the local install it can probably happen with the non-local install...

In any case, definitely something to keep an eye on.

[cderv]

It happened again, but only in one of the 20 windows install we do in the same CI run
https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/actions/runs/8475926973/job/23224776001#step:4:48

I don't see for now what condition or state triggers it 🤔

[gaborcsardi]

@cderv I'll see if setting the registry is important, probably not. Then we can just uncompress a ZIP and set the path instead of the choco install...

[gaborcsardi]

OK, I updated setup-r, to download ghostscript from a zip file. Seems to work well. Plus qpdf is not needed, actually, it is now part of rtools. Will update @v2 tomorrow.

[gaborcsardi]

OK, @v2 now downloads and extract a .zip file for GHostscript. This should work much better. Please let me know if you still see issues.

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