Why does running gclient produce update errors?

Question

I cloned depot_tools according to http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chrome-infra-docs/flat/depot_tools/docs/html/depot_tools_tutorial.html#_setting_up.

Then when I run "gclient" I get this error:

depot_tools update failed. Conflict in /usr/v8-7.7/depot_tools
fatal: Unable to create '/usr/v8-7.7/depot_tools/.git/index.lock': Permission denied
Errors:
  failed to resolve infra/3pp/tools/git/linux-ppc64le@version:2.24.1.chromium.5 (line 27): no such package
  failed to resolve infra/3pp/tools/cpython/linux-ppc64le@version:2.7.17.chromium.22 (line 21): no such package
/usr/v8-7.7/depot_tools/bootstrap_python3: line 32: bootstrap-3.8.0.chromium.8_bin/python3/bin/python3: No such file or directory
WARNING: Your metrics.cfg file was invalid or nonexistent. A new one will be created.
Usage: gclient.py <command> [options]

Meta checkout dependency manager for Git.

I'm running on a ppc64le linux machine set with RHEL 8. I have the goal of trying to install v8 on the machine but first gclient needs to work.

I do have python 2.7.15 installed on the machine.

Answer 1

It was a permissions issue. I just had to adjust the permissions of the folder I was in.

Answer 2

I had the same error when python3 was my default python. gclient is likely running under python3 and not python2, which causes these errors You can use pyenv to manage multiple parallel installations of python.