Yarn package layout unexpected while github is down

[kachkaev]

Before opening an issue please read this.

Are you reporting a bug or a feature request ?

• [x] Bug
• [ ] Feature request

Description

During a recent GitHub incident our Azure Devops Pipelines were failing with the following message: Yarn package layout unexpected.

This was confusing given that it was not clear that Yarn was fetched from GitHub releases. Ironically, when I googled for "yarn package layout unexpected", the only result was the source of this repo, which was.... returning 500 😁

Expected behavior

I would expect a different error message, which would make it clear that a specified Yarn release failed to download because of a remote server error. Perhaps, it could even include links to https://www.githubstatus.com and https://twitter.com/githubstatus?

Reproduction

It's hard to break GitHub on demand, but it may be possible to reproduce the error in tests by replacing a real GitHub releases URL with https://httpstat.us/500.

System information

VSTS or TFS:

• [x] VSTS (azure devops)
• [ ] TFS

Agent:

• [x] Hosted
• [ ] Custom

OS:

• [ ] Windows
• [ ] Mac
• [x] Linux

Yarn version: 1.17.3 (desired), 1.16.0 (already existing on the machine)

Node version: 12

[SlashmanX]

Just a note that this error message is still occurring when Github has operational issues as has been the case the past few days. This issue was the only way I was able to track down the source of the problem in my build step so thanks @kachkaev !