mislav/hub · error

%s\nGiven up after retrying for %.1f seconds.

Error message

%s\nGiven up after retrying for %.1f seconds.

What it means

When creating the pull request fails transiently (e.g. HTTP 422/5xx), gh retries with an increasing delay up to a retry limit. If the error persists after the retries are exhausted, the last error is wrapped with "Given up after retrying for N seconds." and surfaced to the user.

Source

Thrown at commands/pull_request.go:380

				utils.Check(err)
			} else {
				retryAllowance = 9
			}
		}

		var pr *github.PullRequest
		for {
			pr, err = client.CreatePullRequest(baseProject, params)
			if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), `Invalid value for "head"`) {
				if retryAllowance > 0 {
					retryAllowance -= retryDelay
					time.Sleep(time.Duration(retryDelay) * time.Second)
					retryDelay++
					numRetries++
				} else {
					if numRetries > 0 {
						duration := time.Since(startedAt)
						err = fmt.Errorf("%s\nGiven up after retrying for %.1f seconds.", err, duration.Seconds())
					}
					break
				}
			} else {
				break
			}
		}

		if err == nil {
			defer messageBuilder.Cleanup()
		}

		utils.Check(err)

		pullRequestURL = pr.HTMLURL

		params = map[string]interface{}{}
		flagPullRequestLabels := commaSeparated(args.Flag.AllValues("--labels"))

View on GitHub (pinned to 5c547ed804)

Solutions

1. Read the wrapped original error: if it says a PR already exists, open the existing PR instead of creating a new one.
2. Wait for rate limits/outage to clear (check https://www.githubstatus.com) and retry later.
3. Check network/proxy stability; rerun the command once the connection is reliable.
4. Increase patience or check `gh auth status` — an invalid token can also produce persistent API failures.

err := createPullRequest(...)
if err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "already exists") {
        // open existing PR instead
    } else if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "Given up after retrying") {
        // check network / API status, wait, retry later
    }
}

When it happens

Trigger: The GitHub API call to create the PR keeps failing through all retry iterations: err != nil and (no more retries allowed), so the loop breaks after wrapping the error with the elapsed time since startedAt.

Common situations: PR already exists (422 unprocessable entity); GitHub API outage or rate limiting; slow/unreliable network causing repeated timeouts across the whole retry window.

Related errors

• stopped after 10 redirects
• Error: that fork is not available anymore
• Error: No pull request number given
• invalid pull request number: '%s'
• no open pull requests found for branch '%s'

AI-assisted analysis of mislav/hub@5c547ed804 (2026-09-01). Data as JSON: /api/errors/3a45d7010e0d5618. Report an issue: GitHub.