curl failure when building docs

[TylerLoewen]

Documentation error occurred in two jobs:
https://travis-ci.com/github/invenia/LibPQ.jl/jobs/357596026
https://travis-ci.com/github/invenia/LibPQ.jl/jobs/357716606

┌ Warning: `curl -sI --proto =http,https,ftp,ftps https://codecov.io/gh/invenia/LibPQ.jl --max-time 10 -o /dev/null --write-out '%{http_code} %{url_effective} %{redirect_url}'` failed:
│   exception = failed process: Process(`curl -sI --proto =http,https,ftp,ftps https://codecov.io/gh/invenia/LibPQ.jl --max-time 10 -o /dev/null --write-out '%{http_code} %{url_effective} %{redirect_url}'`, ProcessExited(28)) [28]
└ @ Documenter.DocChecks ~/.julia/packages/Documenter/Eayks/src/DocChecks.jl:204
[ Info: Populate: populating indices.
ERROR: LoadError: `makedocs` encountered an error. Terminating build
Stacktrace:
 [1] error(::String) at ./error.jl:33
 [2] runner(::Type{Documenter.Builder.RenderDocument}, ::Documenter.Documents.Document) at /home/travis/.julia/packages/Documenter/Eayks/src/Builder.jl:204
 [3] dispatch(::Type{Documenter.Builder.DocumentPipeline}, ::Documenter.Documents.Document) at /home/travis/.julia/packages/Documenter/Eayks/src/Utilities/Selectors.jl:167
 [4] #3 at /home/travis/.julia/packages/Documenter/Eayks/src/Documenter.jl:287 [inlined]

[iamed2]

Fix is to set linkcheck_timeout to something large enough to avoid these timeouts (it's a keyword argument to makedocs)

[arnaudh]

This is still happening, even with 60 seconds timeout.

https://travis-ci.com/github/invenia/LibPQ.jl/jobs/376580006
https://travis-ci.com/github/invenia/LibPQ.jl/jobs/378993147

[iamed2]

Maybe we should just switch to Coveralls if Codecov is giving us so much trouble

[arnaudh]

Not sure this is related, but I get a 405 Method Not Allowed when trying the curl command that fails in the CI job.

$ curl -sI --proto =http,https,ftp,ftps https://codecov.io/gh/invenia/LibPQ.jl --max-time 60 -o /dev/null --write-out '%{http_code} %{url_effective} %{redirect_url}'
405 https://codecov.io/gh/invenia/LibPQ.jl %

The curl flag -I fetches the headers only (HTTP HEAD request).
If I remove it, I get a 200:

200 https://codecov.io/gh/invenia/LibPQ.jl %

Seems like the server for codecov.io doesn't support the HTTP HEAD request.
Not sure that could help explain the occasional timeout though.

I posted a message on community.codecov.io: https://community.codecov.io/t/intermittent-timeout-contacting-codecov-io-from-github-actions/1690/16

[arnaudh]

Got a response from Codecov folks: they are working on the infrastructure to prevent timeouts.
In the meantime they suggest adding --retry 5 --retry-delay 2 --connect-timeout 2 to the curl command.
However the curl command in our case being inside Documenter.jl, I'm not sure it's worth making changes there again. After all, if a link needs retrying to succeed, it makes sense for the link-checking to fail.

Given Codecov are aware of the issue and working on it, I suggest we wait it out. If we find the issue too noisy we can disable linkcheck in the interim.

[iamed2]

After all, if a link needs retrying to succeed, it makes sense for the link-checking to fail.

This makes sense to an extent; it's reasonable to include any retrying that might happen automatically in a typical web browser, since linkcheck's aim is to test that people can follow links in their browser to existing pages. But I'm not sure what happens in typical web browsers.