How can I install something on Travis CI without a timeout?

Question

I am trying to test a package build on travis-ci.org, but am coming up against a timeout with pip install scipy:

Installing collected packages: scipy
  Running setup.py install for scipy
    Running command /home/travis/virtualenv/python2.6.9/bin/python -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='/tmp/pip-build-Fn2gmJ/scipy/setup.py';exec(compile(getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__).read().replace('\r\n', '\n'), __file__, 'exec'))" install --record /tmp/pip-hWDx9L-record/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile --install-headers /home/travis/virtualenv/python2.6.9/include/site/python2.6


No output has been received in the last 10 minutes, this potentially indicates a stalled build or something wrong with the build itself.

The build has been terminated

(extract from a recent build log).

How can I build scipy >= 0.11 on Travis without a timeout?

Answer 1

The solution is straightforward. Just prefix the installation command with travis_wait. More details are available at https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/common-build-problems.

Answer 2

The default timeout per command on Travis is 10 minutes and when you use the function travis_wait only, the timeout is 20 minutes. If your build need wait more than 20 minutes, you can pass a number of minutes to function travis_wait, exemple:

$ travis_wait 30 pip install scipy

This is a function undocumented in Travis, but it is suggested by Hiro Asari from Travis on github issue.

Answer 3

You could also use an approach from here, if using the commands like travis_wait provided by Travis CI isn't an option.

In my case I wanted to keep Travis running while defining steps in separate shell scripts where I had no idea how to use Travis-provided commands. The approach above worked out pretty well (if interested see the pull request).