Re: Multiple profiles with Guix Home

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

Am Donnerstag, dem 05.05.2022 um 23:28 +0200 schrieb Maxime Devos:
> 
> > Having to debate the semantics of a 2.5 year old blog posts should
> > not be necessary in any
> I don't think the semantics of
> <https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/guix-profiles-in-practice/> was
> debated anywhere here?  Were there any differing interpretations of
> that blog post?
IMHO, you are ignoring the very obvious GUIX_EXTRA_PROFILES stuff,
because "we have guix shell".  No, guix shell is not a solution to this
problem.

> Liliana Marie Prikler schreef op do 05-05-2022 om 22:53 [+0200]:
> > Note that the context has always been placing multiple profiles in
> > well-defined locations.  It was assumed from the very first post
> > that you have a use for those, or at the very least that you don't
> > mind others having a use for them.
> 
> As I understood it, it was introduced as ‘here's a feature proposal’.
> By the following messages, I understood it as ‘this feature proposal
> is to solve some issues (profile building speed, ...)’ -- i.e., a
> means to a goal.
Again, Andrew spoke about costs and benefits, wherein I assumed he
meant the costs and benefits of building multiple profiles in Guix Home
vs. building a single profile.  I already clarified this
misunderstanding (or at least assumed I did).

> > 
> > > (7) is already achieved by "guix install" / "guix package -m".
> > > The ‘source on login’ isn't though -- half-achieved?
> > It's not.  You can't currently declare a noop profile in any Guix
> > command.  A noop profile is distinct from an empty profile.
> 
> I don't know what a ‘noop profile’ is but whatever, I don't think it
> matters here given that some other things remain.  Will become clear
> once it is implemented I guess.
In this case it's a home-profile that leads to no build action.  The
very concept has no meaning outside of managing multiple profiles,
because it is always assumed you're modifying a particular one (or
working on a transient one in the case of guix shell).

> > See Andrew's objection in the light of non-managed profiles.
> 
> I'm not seeing any fragility?  And I'm not seeing the relevancy of
> non-managed profiles here -- if it's non-managed how would the
> alternative proposal be better there?  And why would Guix Home
> concern itself with non-Guix-Home profiles?

So as to figure out the right order w.r.t. PATH shadowing.  For
instance, this proposal would allow you to install Guix extensions in a
well-known location while guix itself is still the one that's used by
guix pull.  In order to do that, you need to set up current-guix as a
noop profile and the extensions inside a profile that's below it in the
search path.

Cheers