Re: [PATCH 2/2] gnu: Add dovecot service

[Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>]

On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 08:04:19AM +0000, Andy Wingo wrote:
> On Tue 15 Dec 2015 22:58, ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
> > Andy Wingo <wingo@igalia.com> skribis:
> >
> >> * gnu/services/mail.scm: New file.
> >
> > Regarding the Schemefied configuration, do you think Dovecot’s
> > configuration model is stable enough that this won’t have to change
> > much?  Is a “cheat mode” (where one can pass raw strings to paste into
> > the configuration file) needed?
> 
> Finally, I'm not adverse to a .conf file escape hatch.  It's especially
> convincing in a context where other services do the same -- we should
> have a greater degree of uniformity across services.  However if other
> services implemented a 100%-solution Scheme configuration interface, I
> wonder if we would still want the .conf file interface.  Dunno!

For 3rd party software, I think we should make it possible for users to
use upstream's configuration language, preferably as a text block inside
of the service configuration block.

Otherwise, it will be difficult for users to migrate to GuixSD, since
their existing configuration files and their knowledge won't apply.
Plus, it will make it more difficult for our users to get support for
the 3rd party software if it is configured in an unfamiliar way.

I'm wary of this approach based on my experiences with systemd on NixOS,
where only some features of systemd are exposed by the Nix wrapper. [0]
Now _that_ is a frustrating 80% solution.

On the other hand, being able to reuse my existing nginx.conf within
configuration.nix was very convenient.

[0]
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/1689
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/3702