Failed to extract packages error during installation

[Tom-van-Woudenberg]

Checklist

• I added a descriptive title
• I searched open reports and couldn't find a duplicate

What happened?

After #991 was merged, @moorepants began building our Windows installers from the development version of constructor. The first builds worked and we confirmed that the permissions issue was fixed. This first release was built with the development version just after #991 was merged:

https://gitlab.ewi.tudelft.nl/bhmgerritsen/anaconda-dee-config/-/releases/v2025.02 (exe download)

We have successfully installed this version on Windows many times. I recently started testing new installers we are building and reported that the Windows installer no longer works, showing this:

I get an error "Failed to extract packages", during installation (after uninstall TU Delft conda, restart, reinstall):

@moorepants has made some changes to the installer build, namely removing the pytorch channel in the construct.yaml file and some minor version bumps. You can see the changes here:

https://gitlab.ewi.tudelft.nl/bhmgerritsen/anaconda-dee-config/-/compare/v2025.02...master?from_project_id=6594

@moorepants then wondered if the commits to constructor since #991 may have caused the installation failure, so he built an installer using constructor @ db1ea11 (#991) and get this result:

https://github.com/moorepants/anaconda-dee-config/actions/runs/16362487740 (download the exe installer artifact)

and that installed successfully on Windows on his machine. However, it didn't work for me, leading to the same issue

To summarize, it seems like commits post #991 may be causing this failure to extract packages error on some machines. An example exe that should demonstrate this failure is:

https://github.com/moorepants/anaconda-dee-config/actions/runs/16340399472

Additional Context

No response

[marcoesters]

Just to summarize to make sure I understand this correctly:

• Using a development version after EXE installers: inherit permissions from $INSTDIR for all-users installations #991 was merged worked for you.
• Latest installer builds did NOT work for you. I'm not sure from the report what build/commit of constructor was used though.
• Using commit db1ea11 did NOT work for you.

If all this is correct, it seems unlikely that the problem is a commit after #991, especially since that part of the code wasn't touched. I have an idea on how we can get more information though.

After a failed installation, open your terminal - if you tried to install for all users, you will have to open it as Administrator. Then, navigate to the directory of your failed installation, and run the following commands:

• .\_conda.exe info
• .\_conda.exe constructor --prefix . --extract-conda-pkgs

That should give us a better idea about why the extraction is failing.

[Tom-van-Woudenberg]

@marcoesters, thank you for your reply!

@moorepants can confirm better which installer (from whih commit) worked.

.\_conda.exe info gives:

C:\Users\tomvanwoudenbe\AppData\Local\tudelft-conda>.\_conda.exe info

     active environment : None
       user config file : C:\Users\tomvanwoudenbe\.condarc
 populated config files : C:\Users\TOMVAN~1\AppData\Local\Temp\_MEI78602\.condarc
          conda version : 24.11.0
    conda-build version : not installed
         python version : 3.12.8.final.0
                 solver : libmamba (default)
       virtual packages : __archspec=1=skylake
                          __conda=24.11.0=0
                          __win=0=0
       base environment : C:\Users\TOMVAN~1\AppData\Local\Temp\_MEI78602  (read only)
      conda av data dir : C:\Users\TOMVAN~1\AppData\Local\Temp\_MEI78602\etc\conda
  conda av metadata url : None
           channel URLs : https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge/win-64
                          https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge/noarch
          package cache : C:\Users\TOMVAN~1\AppData\Local\Temp\_MEI78602\pkgs
                          C:\Users\tomvanwoudenbe\.conda\pkgs
                          C:\Users\tomvanwoudenbe\AppData\Local\conda\conda\pkgs
       envs directories : C:\Users\tomvanwoudenbe\.conda\envs
                          C:\Users\TOMVAN~1\AppData\Local\Temp\_MEI78602\envs
                          C:\Users\tomvanwoudenbe\AppData\Local\conda\conda\envs
               platform : win-64
             user-agent : conda/24.11.0 requests/2.32.3 CPython/3.12.8 Windows/11 Windows/10.0.26100 solver/libmamba conda-libmamba-solver/24.9.0 libmambapy/1.5.11
          administrator : False
             netrc file : None
           offline mode : False

.\_conda.exe constructor --prefix . --extract-conda-pkgs gives:

C:\Users\tomvanwoudenbe\AppData\Local\tudelft-conda>.\_conda.exe constructor --prefix . --extract-conda-pkgs
concurrent.futures.process._RemoteTraceback:
'''
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "concurrent\futures\process.py", line 432, in wait_result_broken_or_wakeup
  File "multiprocessing\connection.py", line 251, in recv
TypeError: InvalidArchiveError.__init__() missing 1 required positional argument: 'msg'
'''

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "entry_point.py", line 244, in _constructor_extract_conda_pkgs
  File "concurrent\futures\_base.py", line 449, in result
  File "concurrent\futures\_base.py", line 401, in __get_result
concurrent.futures.process.BrokenProcessPool: A process in the process pool was terminated abruptly while the future was running or pending.

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "entry_point.py", line 691, in <module>
  File "entry_point.py", line 681, in main
  File "entry_point.py", line 582, in _constructor_subcommand
  File "entry_point.py", line 246, in _constructor_extract_conda_pkgs
RuntimeError: Failed to extract C:\Users\tomvanwoudenbe\AppData\Local\tudelft-conda\pkgs\fonttools-4.59.0-py312h05f76fc_0.conda: A process in the process pool was terminated abruptly while the future was running or pending.
[PYI-4792:ERROR] Failed to execute script 'entry_point' due to unhandled exception!

[marcoesters]

This is the key line in the traceback:

RuntimeError: Failed to extract C:\Users\tomvanwoudenbe\AppData\Local\tudelft-conda\pkgs\fonttools-4.59.0-py312h05f76fc_0.conda: A process in the process pool was terminated abruptly while the future was running or pending.

So, this suggest that there is an issue with that archive on your particular system. Might be worth comparing that file with a system where the installation worked. .conda files are a ZIP archive that contains a text file and two zstd archives, but if this is really a corrupt archive, extracting shouldn't work.

[Tom-van-Woudenberg]

Might be worth comparing that file with a system where the installation worked.

@moorepants, we used the exact same file right, where you had a successfull install while it failed on my PC?

[moorepants]

This is the installer that works for me on Windows: https://github.com/moorepants/anaconda-dee-config/actions/runs/16340399472