Re: Emacs integration for 'guix shell'

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

"Thompson, David" <dthompson2@worcester.edu> writes:

> Hi Philip,
>
> On Sat, Oct 1, 2022 at 4:22 AM Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> wrote:
>
>> I haven't used direnv, but how does it compare to buffer-env?  I worked
>> on the Guix integration a few months ago and it has been working really
>> well for me.
>
> Oh, I didn't realize buffer-env had Guix integration. My little
> project may be completely unnecessary, then. When I looked at it I
> noticed that it still used .envrc files and wasn't fully compatible
> with direnv so it didn't seem as good compared to something that just
> directly invoked 'guix shell'.  Will buffer-env automatically invoke
> 'guix shell' without the presence of a .envrc file?  

Yes, you configure what file it should use to collect modified
environment variables (called `buffer-env-script-name'), and then
depending on the file name it will run a command.  E.g. if you want to
use manifest.scm files and a manifest.scm file is found, it will run

     guix shell -D -f \"path/to/mainfest.scm\" -- env -0

>                                                      And does it
> integrate with project.el?  

No, instead it just looks for the guix.scm or manifest.scm file in a
"dominating directory" (the current working directory or anything
above).  Project.el integration would be trivial to add though.

>                             I guess I can answer these myself by
> trying it out.  If it does both of these things then I can happily
> switch over to it.
>
> Thanks for the pointer!

I wrote about it in some more detail here:
https://amodernist.com/texts/emacs-guix.html, but the post didn't
attract much attention.

> - Dave