Re: more package transformations: overrides

[Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com>]

Hi Ricardo,

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:

> Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>> Considering that the transformations API assumes that you understand
>>> that higher order functions exist and what to do with them, I think it
>>> would be good to offer a slightly less advanced method of overriding
>>> packages.
>>>
>>> Manifests can do anything, but this also makes them rather intimidating
>>> for many of my colleagues.
>>
>> OK; then my question would be: why stop at transformations?  Perhaps we
>> could simply have a way to feed arbitrary guix command line arguments
>> from a file, e.g.
>>
>> guix shell --args-file=my-arguments.txt
>
> The transformations command line options are rather verbose:
>
>   --with-input=python-pytorch=python-pytorch-with-extra-features
>
> I think it would improve usability to be able to use the *same* names in
> an override file.  Got a package with name “python-pytorch” in that
> file?  It replaces “python-pytorch” in the graph.

It's still a bit too abstract in my mind.  Could you please provide a
skeletton of what the overrides file would look like?

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim