zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Chris,
>
> On Mon, 16 Nov 2020 at 19:17, Christopher Baines <mail@cbaines.net> wrote:
>
>>>  - list all the versions available (since Dec. 2019 I guess)
>>>  - know which build and which not
>>>  - easily find the commit for “guix time-machine”
>
> [...]
>
>> Maybe there could be a packages.guix.gnu.org service which pulls
>> together information about packages to meet the common needs that users
>> of Guix have. Things like:
>>
>>  - Searching for packages by name
>>  - Looking at version availability
>>  - Looking at build success/substitute availability
>
> I do not know if the comparison makes sense: To me, the Data Service is
> more-or-less the equivalent of:
>
>    https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/guix
>
> and what you are suggesting would be the equivalent of:
>
>    https://packages.debian.org/experimental/guix
>
> Are we on the same wavelength?  In other words, the Data Service is
> devoted to Guix dev. and Package Service to Guix user.
>
> In this picture, the usage that I described fits to the Package Service,
> right?

Yeah, I think you're on the right track. I'm not set on mirroring the
exact Debian services though.

What I'm suggesting here is that there's some web pages that sit outside
of the Guix Data Service, and try and help users of Guix do things like
searching for packages, and looking at versions through time. Those
pages could be powered by data from data.guix.gnu.org.

A similar idea to the package search prototype here [1], that uses data
from data.guix.gnu.org.

1: http://guix-website-test.cbaines.net/packages/search