Things to do for 0.8

Things to do for 0.8

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Here’s a brain dump listing items that I think should be worked on for
the next release:

  - ‘ungexp-native’ added, like ‘ungexp’, but to allow a gexp to
    explicitly refer to a native package (in case of cross-compilation.)

  - Build system implementations converted to use gexps.

  - New package API, like ‘package-derivation’ but using gexps.  Some
    packages converted to the new style.

  - guix.el integrated, with necessary refactorings done in (guix
    profiles) and (guix scripts package).

  - In ‘operating-system’, support for dm-crypt and swap devices added
    (among other things.)

  - Improved ‘slim-service’: users can choose among different kinds of
    sessions, which requires .desktop files for slim to know about the
    session types.

  - New service definitions, new packages, etc.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.

Re: Things to do for 0.8

[Ludovic Courtès]

Another one:

  - httpd or similar installed on hydra.gnu.org, with caching for the
    .narinfo pages, after which wip-http-pipelining can be merged.

Ludo’.

Re: Things to do for 0.8

[Ludovic Courtès]

Some things didn’t work out as expected, but I think the time has come
to get ready for another release, within 2–4 weeks ideally.

Comments on what was planned and what’s left to be done:

>   - ‘ungexp-native’ added, like ‘ungexp’, but to allow a gexp to
>     explicitly refer to a native package (in case of cross-compilation.)
>
>   - Build system implementations converted to use gexps.
>
>   - New package API, like ‘package-derivation’ but using gexps.  Some
>     packages converted to the new style.

This won’t be for this time, partly because it needs more thought.  (One
problem if we allow use of gexps in package declarations is that it will
make it harder to create variants that use different inputs.)

>   - guix.el integrated, with necessary refactorings done in (guix
>     profiles) and (guix scripts package).
>
>   - In ‘operating-system’, support for dm-crypt and swap devices added
>     (among other things.)

Done.

>   - Improved ‘slim-service’: users can choose among different kinds of
>     sessions, which requires .desktop files for slim to know about the
>     session types.

Would-be-nice, but non blocking.

>   - New service definitions, new packages, etc.

I’d like to add at least an mcron service.

>   - httpd or similar installed on hydra.gnu.org, with caching for the
>     .narinfo pages, after which wip-http-pipelining can be merged.

It would be great to have it done for 0.8, but that shouldn’t be
blocking.

Additional items:

  - Grafts merged.

  - Configuration of libc’s name service switch (NSS), optionally.

  - Testing, bug fix, improvements of the installation image.

  - Possibly updated daemon code from Nix (this requires moving away
    from the git submodule approach to filter-branch + read-tree so we
    can maintain our own branch of it.)

  - GRUB + SLiM artwork anyone?  :-)

What do people think?

Thanks,
Ludo’.