bug#56076: guix shell -P behavior is surprising with persistent home

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hi,

Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be> skribis:

>> > Having to add openssl looks like a bug,
>> 
>> It is, but it’s a reasonable solution for the problem at hand.
>
> I don't think it is.

On another distro, you might have to set SSL_CERT_DIR manually.  It’s
not that big of a deal, or at least not really worse.

[...]

> My patch <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/55297> could be considered a
> work-around, but at least it's automatic for the users, users don't
> need to remember random Guix bug facts.

If we start adding such workarounds, where do we stop?  Someone will
want to have similar workarounds for TERMINFO_DIRS; do we add that to
each and every package that uses ncurses?  What about GST_PLUGIN_PATH?

So far, we’ve addressed those by special-casing a few key variables in
/etc/profile on Guix System and similarly in the file generated by the
install script on foreign distros.

Maybe we could do the same with SSL_CERT_DIR?

> Ludovic Courtès schreef op ma 27-06-2022 om 09:55 [+0200]:
>> That’s a bit of a hack to work around this venerable bug:
>> 
>>   https://issues.guix.gnu.org/22138
>> 
>> :-)
>
> Maybe yes, but there's no progress there

True, but that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.

I understand your frustration (I really do!) and I agree that sometimes
we need workarounds when there’s no “proper” solution in sight.  Our
disagreement is about the kind of workaround in this case; I’m reluctant
to adding search path definitions to users of a library that defines it.

Thanks,
Ludo’.