Bug#869859: Please set Acquire::Retries default to >0

[Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org>]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 09:15:56AM +0200, Michael Stapelberg wrote:
> Source: apt
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> Occasionally, networks (such as the internet) are unreliable. I have observed
> many transient network failures, be it between my machines and the Debian mirror
> network, or be it in the CDNs behind deb.debian.org. This causes pain in
> many different scenarios; I’d like to provide just two recent examples:
> 
> • Scheduled software updates (think a cron job at night time) are delayed
>   unnecessarily because the update fails due to a transient network hickup which
>   isn’t retried.
> 
> • Continuous integration builds on platforms such as travis-ci.org fail due to
>   transient network hickups, confusing users and making them click the retry
>   button for the entire build, wasting time and resources.
> 
> AFAICT, apt currently never retries HTTP requests by default:
> 
> % grep -r Acquire::Retries apt-1.5\~beta1 
> apt-1.5~beta1/apt-pkg/acquire-item.h:    *  Set from Acquire::Retries.
> apt-1.5~beta1/apt-pkg/acquire-item.h:    *  Acquire::Retries.
> apt-1.5~beta1/apt-pkg/acquire-item.cc:   Retries = _config->FindI("Acquire::Retries",0);
> apt-1.5~beta1/apt-pkg/acquire-item.cc:   Retries = _config->FindI("Acquire::Retries",0);
> 
> We should increase the default value of 0 to, say, 3.

I'm happy to do this, if 

(1) you can verify that it actually works for some time, both with very fast
    and very slow networks
(2) write a test case to show that it works

Until we have test cases for it, it's definitely not going to
be the default.


-- 
Debian Developer - deb.li/jak | jak-linux.org - free software dev
                  |  Ubuntu Core Developer |
When replying, only quote what is necessary, and write each reply
directly below the part(s) it pertains to ('inline').  Thank you.