When something fails

If a step of an install, uninstall, upgrade or account change fails, ripeat prints the plain error as before, and when it recognises the failure it adds a likely cause and something to try:

Installing git failed: exit status 100
Why it probably failed: The package manager does not know this package name here.
  What to try: Refresh its package list (for example `sudo apt-get update`), then check the name with `ripeat find <tool>`.
Rolling back this run...

It is a fixed list of rules, not AI: the same failure always gets the same words, and a failure no rule recognises is simply left as the plain error. ripeat never makes up a cause. The error itself and the exit code are unchanged, so scripts that read them keep working.

How it decides

When a command fails, ripeat keeps the last few kilobytes of what it printed (it still shows all of it as it happens). The rules look for known phrases in that text and in the error. Up to three explanations are shown, most specific first; extra ones start with "It may also be".

What it recognises

Cause shown	Typical signs
The administrator policy forbids it	blocked by the administrator policy (Administrator policy)
sudo wanted a password and had no terminal	a password is required, no tty present
Homebrew refuses to run as root	Don't run this as root
Administrator rights are missing (not shown when ripeat is already root or administrator)	permission denied, access is denied, operation not permitted
The package manager does not know the name	Unable to locate package, No match for argument, target not found, No package found, No available formula or cask
Another package manager is running	Could not get lock, unable to lock database, database is locked
GitHub is limiting requests	rate limit (set GITHUB_TOKEN)
The download's SHA-256 is wrong (nothing was installed)	checksum mismatch, changed since ripeat.lock
The machine does not trust the server's certificate	x509:, certificate verify failed, unable to get local issuer certificate
The server could not be reached	Could not resolve host, connection timed out, i/o timeout, dial tcp
The disk is full	No space left on device
A company or system policy blocks it	blocked by group policy, AppLocker, SmartScreen
macOS Gatekeeper blocked an unsigned program	cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified
Dependencies cannot be satisfied	unmet dependencies, held broken packages, conflicts with
A program the step needs is missing	command not found, : not found, is not recognized as an internal or external command
The file is no longer where the recipe says	404 Not Found (not shown when the package manager simply did not know the name)

The advice differs by system where it matters: on Windows it says to open a terminal as Administrator, and elsewhere to run sudo -v first. Both mention --scope user for tools that need no admin rights (Admin rights).

Limits

• Only failures during a run are explained. Mistakes found before anything runs (a bad recipe, a blocked plan, an unknown tool) already stop with a specific message, and ripeat validate finds file mistakes earlier.
• It matches English phrases. A tool printing in another language may go unrecognised, and then the failure is left as the plain error.
• The cause is the likeliest one, not proof. The tool's own output, shown above it, is the evidence.
• A failed rollback step is listed as before; it does not get an explanation.