Brew.sh retry failed installations

DustinB3403

How are you guys using brew and getting programs that fail to download to retry?

IE: brew cask install adobe-acrobat-pro failed to download.

Yet if I open a new shell and run the same command it works, any pointers?

PS. I realize that this is likely an Internet performance related issue, but there isn't much that I can do to address the underlying cause.

DustinB3403

I do have this whole setup process scripted, which makes life easier. But it's such a nusiance to have to go back and reinstall the items that failed.

What I've been doing is just rerunning the script as running the install command doesn't effect things already installed. But this seems sloppy.

marcinozga

Delete cached packages in ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/ - this will also wipe plain brew package cache, if you want to limit this to cask, then delete just content of Cask subfolder. That usually solves all installation problems for me.

DustinB3403

@marcinozga yeah that works for the imcomplete downloads, but how would I automate this? And while I've had a few incomplete downloads to clear out (namely Filezilla) this doesn't appear to be the main issue.

How would I automate retrying to install the failed items?

marcinozga

@DustinB3403 With Ansible for example, there's a module for brew package installation, and you can specify task to retry until you get desired result.

DustinB3403

@marcinozga I've not played with ansible, but maybe I can find something.

marcinozga

@DustinB3403 See this:

https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-homebrew

it's a rather complex role, and it covers complete brew installation, clearing cache and the whole nine yards. If you want to retry it, add following parameters to Cask task, in main.yml file

retries: 2
delay: 5
register: result
until: result.rc == 0

so it looks like this

# Cask.
- name: Install configured cask applications.
  homebrew_cask:
    name: "{{ item }}"
    state: present
    install_options: "appdir={{ homebrew_cask_appdir }}"
    accept_external_apps: "{{ homebrew_cask_accept_external_apps }}"
  with_items: "{{ homebrew_cask_apps }}"
  retries: 2
  delay: 5
  register: result
  until: result.rc == 0
  notify:
    - Clear homebrew cache

You might have to adjust delay, but that should do the trick.

DustinB3403

Now I'm getting Unexpected end of File

FML. . . what changed!