zed-industries/zed · error

failed to extract wasi-sdk archive: {}

Error message

failed to extract wasi-sdk archive: {}

What it means

Thrown by update_wasi_sdk_if_needed after downloading the wasi-sdk archive and running `tar` to extract it; if tar exits non-zero the stderr is wrapped in this error. It indicates the extracted archive is corrupt, in a format tar cannot handle, or the destination directory is unusable.

Source

Thrown at crates/extension/src/extension_builder.rs:533

        let mut async_file = io::AllowStdIo::new(tar_gz_file);
        io::copy(response_body, &mut async_file)
            .await
            .context("streaming response to file")?;
        drop(async_file);

        log::info!("un-tarring wasi-sdk to {tar_out_dir:?}");

        // Shell out to tar to extract the archive
        let tar_output = util::command::new_command("tar")
            .arg("-xzf")
            .arg(&tar_gz_path)
            .arg("-C")
            .arg(&tar_out_dir)
            .output()
            .await
            .context("running tar")?;

        anyhow::ensure!(
            tar_output.status.success(),
            "failed to extract wasi-sdk archive: {}",
            String::from_utf8_lossy(&tar_output.stderr)
        );

        log::info!("finished downloading wasi-sdk");

        // Clean up the temporary tar.gz file
        fs::remove_file(&tar_gz_path).ok();

        let inner_dir = fs::read_dir(&tar_out_dir)?
            .next()
            .context("no content")?
            .context("reading contents of extracted wasi archive directory")?
            .path();
        match fs::remove_dir_all(wasi_sdk_dir) {
            Ok(()) => {}
            Err(error) if error.kind() == std::io::ErrorKind::NotFound => {}

View on GitHub (pinned to 9d272b0363)

Solutions

1. Delete the cached wasi-sdk archive/download directory and retry so a fresh, complete archive is downloaded.
2. Run the same `tar -x` command manually on the downloaded archive to see the real tar error.
3. Verify network/proxy integrity if the download was truncated (compare file size or checksum with the GitHub release).
4. Install a tar that supports the archive's compression (e.g. `apt install tar zstd` / update macOS bsdtar).
5. Ensure the extraction directory exists and is writable by the current user.

let ok = std::process::Command::new("tar").arg("--version").output()
    .map(|o| o.status.success()).unwrap_or(false);
if !ok { eprintln!("tar is unavailable; install it before building extensions"); }

match install_wasi_sdk_if_needed().await {
    Err(e) if e.to_string().contains("failed to extract wasi-sdk") => {
        // delete cached archive and retry once
        clean_wasi_sdk_cache()?;
        install_wasi_sdk_if_needed().await?;
    }
    Err(e) => return Err(e),
    Ok(v) => v,
}

When it happens

Trigger: install_wasi_sdk_if_needed downloads a wasi-sdk release archive and shells out to `tar -x ... -C <tar_out_dir>`; the error fires whenever that tar process returns a failure status, e.g. truncated download, unsupported compression, or unwritable target directory.

Common situations: Corrupt or partially downloaded wasi-sdk archive due to flaky network or a proxy; a wasi-sdk release asset whose compression format the system tar lacks support for (e.g. zstd on old tar); disk full or permission problems in the extraction directory; no `tar` binary on the system (e.g. minimal Windows installs).

Understand the failure class

Background: "failed to read file", EACCES, ENOENT and "could not read <path>" errors: when a program can't read a file from disk — this error's family across 49 libraries.

Related errors

• failed to create archive.tar.gz: {}
• failed to compile {} parser with clang: {}
• unknown benchmark '{benchmark_id}' (valid: {valid})
• judge proxy exited before becoming ready
• verifier produced no results (exit {completed.returncode}):

AI-assisted analysis of zed-industries/zed@9d272b0363 (2026-09-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/abfa7c113d925fe7. Report an issue: GitHub.