How to debug cro installation with zef

Question

I'd like to try some things with raku and cro but can't install it with:

zef install cro

I'm getting an error when it tries to install the module YAMLish. Running the installation with --debug gives:

[YAMLish] Extracting with plugin Zef::Service::Shell::tar aborted.
something went wrong extracting C:\Users\zb\AppData\Local\Temp/.zef/1698391208.16200\1698391222.16200.367.3485459071357\YAMLish%3Aver%3C0.0.6%3E%3Aauth%3Cgithub%3ALeont%3E.tar.gz
to C:\Users\zb\AppData\Local\Temp/.zef/1698391208.16200\YAMLish%3Aver%3C0.0.6%3E%3Aauth%3Cgithub%3ALeont%3E.tar.gz
with Zef::Service::Shell::git<3508240998224>,Zef::Service::FetchPath<3508225362272>,Zef::Service::Shell::tar<3508225362240>,Zef::Service::Shell::unzip<3508225361216>

The archive in question is present and was partly extracted to the target directory. If I were to guess, it seems to have choked on yamlish-master/test-suite/meta which contains a lot of symbolic links that point to non-existant files?

How can I resolve this or debug further? I'm running Rakudo v2023.10 on Windows 10.0.19045.3570.

Answer 1

Update: The issue was fixed a few hours later by YAMLish's maintainer

---

With help from ugexe it became clear this is indeed caused by failure to create the symbolic links in question and that a workaround is to install directly from the YAMLish github repo:

zef install https://github.com/Leont/yamlish.git

Digging a bit deeper, I've found that creating symlinks in Windows (e.g. mklink) is only allowed

• with administrative privileges or
• in "Developer Mode" (added 2016 in Windows 10 build 14972)

Going either route allows installing the YAMLish module with just:

zef install YAMLish