bug#41387: "Building from Git" on foreign distro starting with NO guix?

[Bengt Richter <bokr@bokr.com>]

Hi Julien,

On +2020-05-19 08:03:37 -0400, Julien Lepiller wrote:
> Le 18 mai 2020 23:07:42 GMT-04:00, Bengt Richter <bokr@bokr.com> a écrit :
> >Hi,
> >
> >[~/wb/guix110git/guix]$ ./configure --prefix=$(realpath ./mybuild)
> >checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
> >checking whether build environment is sane... yes
> >...
> >...
> >checking pkg-config is at least version 0.9.0... yes
> >configure: checking for guile 3.0
> >configure: checking for guile 2.2
> >configure: found guile 2.2
> >checking for guile-2.2... /usr/bin/guile-2.2
> >checking for Guile version >= 2.2... 2.2.4
> >checking for guild-2.2... /usr/bin/guild-2.2
> >checking for guile-config-2.2... /usr/bin/guile-config-2.2
> >checking for GUILE... yes
> >checking if (gnutls) is available... no
> >configure: error: The Guile bindings of GnuTLS are missing; please
> >install them.
> >--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
> >
> >Well, it was looking for guile 3.0 and my foreign distro only has 2.2.4
> >--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> >guile (GNU Guile) 2.2.4
> >Packaged by Debian (2.2.4-deb+1-2)
> >Copyright (C) 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> >--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
> >which it seemed ok with, but I don't seem to be able get my distro's
> >GnuTLS
> >hooked up with this installation procedure, and suspect a GnuTLS/Guile
> >version
> >mismatch problem or such, but then I ran out of enthusiasm :)
> 
> As you can see, configure looks for guile 3.0, fails and falls back to guile 2.2, which it finds as /usr/bin/guile-2.2.
> 
> Gnutls provides guile bindings, but they are not necessarily built by your distribution. From my experiments with debian/hurd, the bindings were not present, so probably the same with debian/linux? You'll probably have to checkout gnutls and build the bindings.
> 
> The configure script only checks that the guile it found (your 2.2) can load the (gnutls) module, so there cannot be a version mismatch, unless debian built the gnutls module with guile 3.0. Check with your distribution what files are installed with the gnutls package. There should be some in /usr/lib/guile/.
> 
> You'll need to look at the dependencies, some of them are probably not provided by debian yet. I remember some discussions about creating a debian package of guix. If this was accepted, then the dependencies must be available at least in unstable. You might want to check.
>

Thanks for your tips!
I also went on to read Pjotr Prins' extensive notes on installing [1].

Looks like he can say "Been there, done that" re most install travails,
and IIUC he recommends against "Building from Git" as step 1, advising
to use a binary install first, and then use guix tools to hack further in a full repo.

BTW, he suggests a recursive clone, but I didn't see what that really does or entails.
Not sure I want to download the entire history of all development branches of guix,
if that's what it means :)

(re that: it would be nice to see an approximate download size when advice to download
appears in docs, for those who pay for GBs ;-)

Perhaps 14.1 in the docs should be updated with a reference to [1] and to suggest (emphatically?)
there in 14.1 (as it does elsewhere) that the easier path will be to do a binary install first?
And also un-mix directions for the two kinds of install activities!

Leading people into frustrating experiences can't be good PR for guix. Cui bono?

Anyway, I think I'll give up on Building from Git for now, and go back to monkeying with
guix-install.sh (making it incrementally restartable to avoid re-downloading etc. and
seeing how far I can factor out root both in the script and the resulting guix daemonium) :)

[1] https://gitlab.com/pjotrp/guix-notes/-/blob/master/INSTALL.org

Thanks again.

-- 
Regards,
Bengt Richter