bug#70433: customize-kernel does not accept inferior package

bug#70433: customize-kernel does not accept inferior package

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Especially on underpowered aarch64 systems with custom kernels it may be
desirable to avoid rebuilding the kernel on "guix deploy" or "guix
system reconfigure".  It's possible to use an inferior to pin the kernel
to a known good version.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work when attempting to customize the kernel
with "customize-kernel" as that procedure doesn't accept an inferior as
an input package.

-- 
Ricardo

bug#70433: customize-kernel does not accept inferior package

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:

> Especially on underpowered aarch64 systems with custom kernels it may be
> desirable to avoid rebuilding the kernel on "guix deploy" or "guix
> system reconfigure".  It's possible to use an inferior to pin the kernel
> to a known good version.
>
> Unfortunately, this doesn't work when attempting to customize the kernel
> with "customize-kernel" as that procedure doesn't accept an inferior as
> an input package.

"customize-kernel" works by inheriting from a base package.  It then
augments the arguments.

Inheriting from an inferior package does not work, though.  Nor is there
a procedure to obtain the arguments of an inferior package.  The naïve
approach of simply defining inferior-package-arguments fails:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
    (define (inferior-package-arguments package)
      "Return the arguments field of PACKAGE."
      (inferior-package-field package 'package-arguments))

    ...

    (inferior-package-arguments linux-libre-arm64-generic/fixed)
    ice-9/boot-9.scm:1685:16: In procedure raise-exception:
    socket:20:156: Unknown # object: "#<"
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---


-- 
Ricardo