wagoodman/dive · error

failed evaluation

Error message

failed evaluation

What it means

Set on the progress monitor (mon.SetError) when the rule evaluator concludes eval.Pass == false. Unlike error [0] (which turns this into a process exit code), this one only marks the 'Evaluating image' task as failed in the terminal task list — the full eval report is still emitted via bus.Report and the eval result is returned to the caller. It represents the same condition: one or more CI rules failed against the analysis.

Solutions

1. Inspect the printed evaluation report to identify the failing rule and margin
2. Reduce wasted space in the image (combine add/remove layers, clean package caches)
3. Adjust or disable the offending rule in the CI rules config
4. If the failure is marginal and acceptable, document a new threshold and commit the config change alongside the image change

Example fix

# .dive-ci
# before
rules:
  lowestEfficiencyThreshold: 0.9
  highestWastedBytes: 1MB

# after (realistic for the current image)
rules:
  lowestEfficiencyThreshold: 0.8
  highestWastedBytes: 50MB

eval := adapter.NewEvaluator(rules).Evaluate(ctx, analysis)
if !eval.Pass {
    for _, r := range eval.Report {
        // log rule key + expected/actual for actionable CI output
    }
    return errors.New("failed evaluation")
}

When it happens

Trigger: adapter.NewEvaluator(rules).Evaluate(ctx, analysis) running under --ci with at least one rule (lowestEfficiencyThreshold, highestWastedBytes, highestUserWastedPercent) evaluating to RuleFailed against the analyzed image.

Common situations: CI pipelines gating image builds on size/efficiency; a base-image update (e.g. new ubuntu tag) suddenly pushes wasted bytes over the configured threshold without any Dockerfile change.

Related errors

• evaluation failed
• highestUserWastedPercent config value is outside allowed…
• invalid highestUserWastedPercent config value, given
• invalid highestWastedBytes config value, given
• invalid config value, given

AI-assisted analysis of wagoodman/dive@d6c691947f (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5a1f38b8e906d53d. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at cmd/dive/cli/internal/command/adapter/evaluator.go:44

func (c evaluationActionObserver) Evaluate(ctx context.Context, analysis *image.Analysis) ci.Evaluation {
	log.WithFields("image", analysis.Image).Infof("evaluating image")
	mon := bus.StartTask(payload.GenericTask{
		Title: payload.Title{
			Default:      "Evaluating image",
			WhileRunning: "Evaluating image",
			OnSuccess:    "Evaluated image",
		},
		HideOnSuccess:      false,
		HideStageOnSuccess: false,
		ID:                 analysis.Image,
		Context:            fmt.Sprintf("[rules: %d]", len(c.Rules)),
	})
	eval := c.Evaluator.Evaluate(ctx, analysis)
	if eval.Pass {
		mon.SetCompleted()
	} else {
		mon.SetError(fmt.Errorf("failed evaluation"))
	}
	bus.Report(eval.Report)
	return eval
}

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