Re: A friendlier API for operating-system declarations

[Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prikler@gmail.com>]

Am Donnerstag, dem 23.03.2023 um 09:06 +0100 schrieb Edouard Klein:
> After a few months of experience, and positive feedback from my
> clients, my question to you guys is: would you be interested in
> mainlining this, or should I keep my development efforts separate in
> my channel ?
Having just dropped a series of "old-style" service procedures, I don't
think that maintaining a separate API on the mainline is a good idea.

> I do think this API is easier than manipulating services, and
> although extendable services are awesome and a very nifty piece of
> engineering, they require quite a good knowledge of scheme and take a
> while to be used to, while this new API, while way less powerful,
> lowers the barrier to entry for newcomers.
I see how this style (and a similar one that has already been shown for
guix home) can improve configuration file clarity and that's a good
thing.  On the other hand, it looks like you currently have to manually
craft a lot of the procedures that go into the -> syntax and that's...
well, not so good.

If we could enable this style easier – say if we made it so that
define-configuration and service-type also emitted ready-to-use
constructors to use with a keyword style at little extra cost other
than compilation time, I think that'd be a net positive for everyone
involved.

Cheers