Error when trying to install promtool

[JarnoRFB]

What did you do?
go get -v github.com/prometheus/prometheus/cmd/promtool

What did you expect to see?
promtool being installed.

What did you see instead? Under which circumstances?

# github.com/prometheus/prometheus/cmd/promtool
../go/src/github.com/prometheus/prometheus/cmd/promtool/main.go:645:35: not enough arguments in call to api.LabelValues
	have (context.Context, string, time.Time, time.Time)
	want (context.Context, string, []string, time.Time, time.Time)

Environment

• Go version
  go version go1.15.8 linux/amd64

• System information:
  Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
  Linux 5.4.0-65-generic x86_64

[skorpy2009]

The bug was introduced by prometheus/client_golang#828
prometheus/client_golang@babeb35#diff-9a3a8e3f0424115273d9a05e9b087ad13a7872995a962822be6975c287d3857cR236

[roidelapluie]

Thank you. Promtool builds fine within out CI, so I think it might be in your local setup.

Can you try with a released binary? You can get them at https://prometheus.io/download/ ; it is shipped with Prometheus.

Alternatively, could you try to run:

git clone https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus
cd prometheus
make build

which is the "official" way to build Prometheus.

[ZyanKLee]

I got the same issue when building in docker with Dockerfile:

FROM golang:1.15.8-buster as prom

RUN go get github.com/prometheus/alertmanager/cmd/amtool ;\
    go get github.com/prometheus/prometheus/cmd/promtool ;\
    /go/bin/amtool --version ;\
    /go/bin/promtool --version

amtool installs fine, but promtool fails with the message mentioned above.

[beorn7]

You have to make sure to be in Go-module mode. If you just build from the lastest state of all the dependencies, you'll run into the breaking change that was merged in prometheus/client_golang recently.

For example, you could run

GO111MODULE=on go get -v github.com/prometheus/prometheus/cmd/promtool@master

In general, it's recommended to use the released binaries published here. If you want to build things yourself, be prepared to run into some Go shenanigans.

[JarnoRFB]

Using GO111MODULE=on go get -v github.com/prometheus/prometheus/cmd/promtool@master works indeed, thanks!

It should be mentioned that building promtool from source is explicitly mentioned in the docs https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/configuration/recording_rules/ . I believe it would make sense then to instead recommended to use the released binaries. I can provide a PR if that makes sense.

[beorn7]

Good catch. I created #8491 to address that.