Build failure with `error: writing to file: Broken pipe`

[traxys]

Issue trace

None failed to evaluate:
error: derivation 'x86_64-linux.tests' does not have valid outputs: error:
… while calling the 'getAttr' builtin
at <nix/derivation-internal.nix>:19:19:
18| value = commonAttrs // {
19| outPath = builtins.getAttr outputName strict;
| ^
20| drvPath = strict.drvPath;
… while calling the 'derivationStrict' builtin
at <nix/derivation-internal.nix>:9:12:
8|
9| strict = derivationStrict drvAttrs;
| ^
10|
(stack trace truncated; use '--show-trace' to show the full, detailed trace)
error: writing to file: Broken pipe

See this invocation of buildbot The rebuild of the same derivation worked fine (though the complete build was a failure due to the same error on another derivation)

Context

We are using nix-community's buildbot in nixvim, and we encountered a few issues. We have a derivation that consumed a huge amount of RAM (~20 GiB?), leading to issues (see nix-community/nixvim#1878).

I tried to improve the situation in nix-community/nixvim#1882 by reducing the number of derivations inside a link farm, but I hit the reported issue rebuild after rebuild

[zowoq]

Build failure with error: writing to file: Broken pipe See this invocation of buildbot

Just to clarify, this isn't a build failure, it is from the eval step: https://buildbot.nix-community.org/#/builders/43/builds/245/steps/2/logs/stdio