Symlink errors? Failures when downloading; "Something went wrong"

Description

Paket has started throwing lots of errors while restoring in the latter releases:

-version 5.226.0
-clitool paket 5.226.0
+version 5.241.5
+clitool paket 5.241.5

or:

 Downloading fake-cli 5.19.0 (Build)
 Download of fake-cli 5.19.0 (Build) done in 1 second. (53127 kbit/s, 7 MB)
 Downloading Http.fs 5.3
 Something went wrong while downloading System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter 4.5
 Message: Start of process ln failed.
   ==> Trying again
 Downloading Argu 5.5
 Downloading System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter 4.5
 Something went wrong while downloading runtime.rhel.7-x64.runtime.native.System.    Security.Cryptography.OpenSsl 4.3.3
 Message: Start of process ln failed.
   ==> Trying again

Repro steps

Please provide the steps required to reproduce the problem

1. .paket/paket install

Expected behavior

Please provide a description of the behavior you expect.

Paket should not corrupt installs or else it should say what’s wrong, not just “Something went wrong”, as that’s not a proper error message to act on.

Known workarounds

Downgrade? Perhaps it’s .net 3.1-based?

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Another output:

Downloading Paket 5.241.5
Download of System.Runtime.InteropServices 4.3 done in 373 milliseconds. (55700 kbit/s, 2 MB)
Not moving as '/Users/h/.nuget/packages/paket/5.241.5/paket.5.241.5.nupkg' already exists (maybe some other instance downloaded it as well)
Download of Paket 5.241.5 done in 2 seconds. (23799 kbit/s, 5 MB)
Performance:
 - Resolver: 28 seconds (2 runs)
    - Runtime: 1 second
    - Blocked (retrieving package details): 26 seconds (329 times)
    - Blocked (retrieving package versions): 1 second (2 times)
 - Disk IO: 1 second
 - Average Download Time: 187 milliseconds
 - Number of downloads: 10
 - Average Request Time: 61 milliseconds
 - Number of Requests: 528
 - Runtime: 36 seconds
Paket failed with
-> Could not find nuspec in '/Users/h/dev/app/packages/Paket', try deleting the directory and restoring again.

---

Same issue with 6.0.0-alpha011.

[ThisFunctionalTom]

I just got the same error on windows.

Repro:

dotnet new -i waypoint
dotnet new waypoint
dotnet tool restore
dotnet paket restore

and I get following error:

Paket failed with
-> symlink C:\Users\leko.tomas\.nuget\packages\runtime.fedora.28-x64.runtime.native.system.security.cryptography.openssl\4.3.3 -> C:\Users\Leko.Tomas\playground\Svldb.Core\packages\docs\runtime.fedora.28-x64.runtime.native.System.Security.Cryptography.OpenSsl failed with error : [1] with output :
    and error : You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation.

So, I just found out the solution.

It is not a problem of paket but in windows the symlinks cannot be created without elevated shell. In windows 10 you have to enable “Developer Mode” to enable creating symlinks from the command line without elevated shell. For more information see here: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/12/02/symlinks-windows-10/

[ThisFunctionalTom]

I just got the same error on windows.

Repro:

dotnet new -i waypoint
dotnet new waypoint
dotnet tool restore
dotnet paket restore

and I get following error:

Paket failed with
-> symlink C:\Users\leko.tomas\.nuget\packages\runtime.fedora.28-x64.runtime.native.system.security.cryptography.openssl\4.3.3 -> C:\Users\Leko.Tomas\playground\Svldb.Core\packages\docs\runtime.fedora.28-x64.runtime.native.System.Security.Cryptography.OpenSsl failed with error : [1] with output :
    and error : You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation.