Hello Katherine,

Katherine Cox-Buday writes:

> Hey Guix!
>
> Very often I find myself updating systems only to get stuck on building
> something large like LibreOffice or Un-Googled Chromium. Usually the
> substitutes for these are available a few days later.
>
> It would be nice if I could pass a flag to `guix package -u` that would
> disallow building in the event a substitute wasn't available. Is that
> `--fallback=false`? If so, that's a double-negative; is there a clearer
> way to represent both without acreting options?

I don't think there is an option for this. It would certainly be helpful
if there were one.

Currently, my workaround is to create a manifest listing packages to be
installed:
https://notabug.org/alexvong1995/guix-package-declaration/src/master/manifest
and run "guix package -m ./manifest" instead of "guix package -u".

[emacs-guix users can run the interactive function `guix-apply-manifest'
instead.]

When there is a package without substitutes, I will stop the command,
comment out the said package and re-run the command. I will also re-try
after a few days when more substitutes are available.

Hope this help!

Cheers,
Alex