bug#40839: Shepherd activation .GO files are not cross-compiled ... and the Hurd

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org>]

Mathieu Othacehe writes:

>> We did this to avoid too much struggle up front with parameterizing,
>> working around, or removing Linux-specifics from "guix system
>> --target=i586-pc-gnu build,vm,..."
>
> I have not followed really closely the recent progress on the Hurd, but
> I think we may need to synchronize at some point :)

Oh no! :)

I haven't been following either...but I did notice that "guix system
reconfigure" may be tricky on the Hurd, given that it does not have
Qemu.  I was actively trying not to think about that, hoping some
solution would present itself.

> As you have noticed our image creation is very tied to Linux and Intel
> x86 compatible machines. I would like in the future that producing images
> for other architectures/kernels could be less hacky.

Yes...the Intel bit isn't really hurting the Hurd efforts yet (sadly),
but I see what you mean.

> My idea is to:
>
> * Speed up image creation by removing the need to use VM to produce
>   images.
>
> * Augment the operating-system record, or provide a new record, that
>   encapsulates information related to image layout (partitions,
>   bootloader location), target architecture (i586-pc-gnu,
>   aarch64-linux, ...).
>
>   This way, one would just have to run `guix system disk-image
>   my-board.scm' or `guix system disk-image --board=xxx config.scm', and
>   not have to worry about specifying the correct target triplet, kernel
>   and bootloader packages.
>
> On the wip-disk-image, I propose the creation of an "image" record in
> (gnu image), but I'm still not sure how to interface it.

Thanks for the ping and the summary: I should really look into that!

I am currently still looking to consolidate all the cross build fixes,
and how to migrate the Shepherd and services hacks into the regular
framework.  I'm guessing that's all stuff that wip-disk-image does not
touch/change.

Greetings,
janneke

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> | GNU LilyPond http://lilypond.org
Freelance IT http://JoyofSource.com | Avatar® http://AvatarAcademy.com