[PATCH] HACKING: Mention 'guix environment'.

[PATCH] HACKING: Mention 'guix environment'.

[David Thompson]

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Just today I used 'guix environment guix' to quickly create a
development environment for Guix hacking.  I figured it should be
mentioned in the HACKING file to assist developers that happen to
already by using a Guix system.

WDYT?


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From e03345616cd4325cec928d6a6c5f35cbc47eb330 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: David Thompson <davet@gnu.org>
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 08:06:21 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] HACKING: Mention 'guix environment'.

---
 HACKING | 6 ++++++
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)

diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING
index 0231c7d..ad816aa 100644
--- a/HACKING
+++ b/HACKING
@@ -21,6 +21,12 @@ addition to those mentioned in the installation instructions:
   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/][GNU Gettext]]
   - [[http://www.graphviz.org/][Graphviz]]
 
+If you are building Guix on a system that already runs Guix, you can use 'guix
+environment' to spawn a shell whose environment contains all of the necessary
+packages without installing them to your user profile:
+
+  guix environment guix
+
 Run ‘./bootstrap’ to download the Nix daemon source code and to generate the
 build system infrastructure using autoconf.  It reports an error if an
 inappropriate version of the above packages is being used.
-- 
2.1.2


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-- 
David Thompson
Web Developer - Free Software Foundation - http://fsf.org
GPG Key: 0FF1D807
Support the FSF: https://fsf.org/donate

Re: [PATCH] HACKING: Mention 'guix environment'.

[Ludovic Courtès]

David Thompson <dthompson2@worcester.edu> skribis:

> Just today I used 'guix environment guix' to quickly create a
> development environment for Guix hacking.  I figured it should be
> mentioned in the HACKING file to assist developers that happen to
> already by using a Guix system.
>
> WDYT?

Sure, please commit!  I thought I had done it, but no.

> +If you are building Guix on a system that already runs Guix, you can use 'guix
> +environment' to spawn a shell whose environment contains all of the necessary
> +packages without installing them to your user profile:
> +
> +  guix environment guix

This is true only when ‘guix’ refers to the development version, which
has the autotools etc. as inputs.

I think it would be nice to have a ‘--install’ option to specify
additional packages to add to the environment, so that one could do
(say):

  guix environment mpc -i autoconf automake libtool

and get a really complete development environment.

(We discussed this on IRC some time ago, but I think we had overlooked
this simple solution.)

WDYT?

Ludo’.

Re: [PATCH] HACKING: Mention 'guix environment'.

[David Thompson]

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> David Thompson <dthompson2@worcester.edu> skribis:
>
>> Just today I used 'guix environment guix' to quickly create a
>> development environment for Guix hacking.  I figured it should be
>> mentioned in the HACKING file to assist developers that happen to
>> already by using a Guix system.
>>
>> WDYT?
>
> Sure, please commit!  I thought I had done it, but no.
>
>> +If you are building Guix on a system that already runs Guix, you can use 'guix
>> +environment' to spawn a shell whose environment contains all of the necessary
>> +packages without installing them to your user profile:
>> +
>> +  guix environment guix
>
> This is true only when ‘guix’ refers to the development version, which
> has the autotools etc. as inputs.

Okay, so that's not always the case?  In that case, we could say:

  guix environment -e '(@@ (gnu packages package-management) guix-devel)'

> I think it would be nice to have a ‘--install’ option to specify
> additional packages to add to the environment, so that one could do
> (say):
>
>   guix environment mpc -i autoconf automake libtool
>
> and get a really complete development environment.
>
> (We discussed this on IRC some time ago, but I think we had overlooked
> this simple solution.)

I think that is a good idea in general, so I will work on adding it.

For this case, since there is already a guix-devel package, is it okay
to just refer to that?  It's simpler that needing to add '-i autoconf
automake libtool graphviz gettext'. Alternatively, we could maintain a
'development.scm' file specifically for this purpose, then you would
run:

  guix environment -l development.scm

Thoughts?

-- 
David Thompson
Web Developer - Free Software Foundation - http://fsf.org
GPG Key: 0FF1D807
Support the FSF: https://fsf.org/donate

Re: [PATCH] HACKING: Mention 'guix environment'.

[Ludovic Courtès]

David Thompson <dthompson2@worcester.edu> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> David Thompson <dthompson2@worcester.edu> skribis:
>>
>>> Just today I used 'guix environment guix' to quickly create a
>>> development environment for Guix hacking.  I figured it should be
>>> mentioned in the HACKING file to assist developers that happen to
>>> already by using a Guix system.
>>>
>>> WDYT?
>>
>> Sure, please commit!  I thought I had done it, but no.
>>
>>> +If you are building Guix on a system that already runs Guix, you can use 'guix
>>> +environment' to spawn a shell whose environment contains all of the necessary
>>> +packages without installing them to your user profile:
>>> +
>>> +  guix environment guix
>>
>> This is true only when ‘guix’ refers to the development version, which
>> has the autotools etc. as inputs.
>
> Okay, so that's not always the case?  In that case, we could say:
>
>   guix environment -e '(@@ (gnu packages package-management) guix-devel)'

You’re right that it will always work in practice, because there’ll
always be a ‘guix-devel’ more recent than ‘guix’.  So the wording above
is OK.

The problem I was raising does not really apply here; I’m shamelessly
sidetracking, I admit.  ;-)

>> I think it would be nice to have a ‘--install’ option to specify
>> additional packages to add to the environment, so that one could do
>> (say):
>>
>>   guix environment mpc -i autoconf automake libtool
>>
>> and get a really complete development environment.
>>
>> (We discussed this on IRC some time ago, but I think we had overlooked
>> this simple solution.)
>
> I think that is a good idea in general, so I will work on adding it.

OK.

Ludo’.