[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.