Re: The tricky case of "--localstatedir=/var"

[Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com>]

Jookia <166291@gmail.com> writes:

> the Guix package doesn't use this default which breaks compatibility
> with itself.

Ah, I see what you're saying. I think you're saying that the guix
package (defined in gnu/packages/package-management.scm) explicitly sets
the localstatedir to "/var", even though the default localstatedir used
in the guix build scripts winds up being "/usr/local/var", so it causes
problems. Is that right?

It looks like the decision to explicitly set localstatedir to "/var" in
the guix package was made in commit 2d195e67 by Ludo. Perhaps he can
explain what his intent was.

> My use case is building Guix, then using the Guix package in Guix. This includes
> doing things like 'guix package -i guix', 'guix environment guix', 'guix pull',
> etc. These things are required for normal and encouraged use. The only time the
> existing default would be helpful if you didn't do those things, meaning you
> always used your own build of Guix outside of the store.

I understand why you would want to do "guix environment guix" (e.g., to
get the dependencies for guix so you can build it), but I'm curious: why
would you want to do "guix package -i guix"? This is a bit of a
digression, but I'm curious to know why one might want do that.

- Chris