Re: Proof of Concept: Import Emacs' use-packaged packages into Guix' manifest.scm

[Mekeor Melire <mekeor@posteo.de>]

2022-12-19 14:15 andrew@trop.in:

> On 2022-12-18 09:11, Liliana Marie Prikler wrote:
>
> > Am Sonntag, dem 18.12.2022 um 01:54 +0000 schrieb Mekeor Melire:

> I'm neither the author, nor the user of guix home import, however I think it 
> could be a good place for such a functionality, but I would suggest to 
> maintain this helper functions for a while in a personal channel, mature it 
> and revisit this question later.

Good idea. But separating this into a personal channel could also lead to the 
feature being forgotten.

> To make a solution more robust and complete, you can take a look at 
> straight.el and how it redefines use-package-ensure-function and do 
> something similiar to generate a list of packages for guix. Another detail 
> is that use-package accepts a symbol value for :ensure and you can write 
> something like:
>
> ;; (setq use-package-always-ensure t) ; as an alternative to :ensure t
> (use-package vertico
>   :ensure t
>   ...)
>
> (use-package vertico-directory
>   :ensure vertico
>   ...)

True! The parser should consider the :ensure keyword.

> This way you won't need a concept of "blocked" packages.

It'd still be good to have such a concept in order to block packages that 
won't be used on Guix-driven system. For example:

#+begin_src elisp
(when (this-is-not-a-guix-driven-system)
  (use-package some-package-that-is-not-packaged-for-guix))

;; or equivalently

(use-package some-package-that-is-not-packaged-for-guix
  :when (this-is-not-a-guix-driven-system))
#+end_src

> One more idea: make a function which accepts file-like/origin object instead 
> of string and generates a package with propagated-dependencies based on the 
> content of source code provided as an argument.

You mean something like this?:

#+begin_src scheme
(define-public my-emacs
  (emacs-from-init
    :custom-emacs-package emacs-with-athena-instead-of-gtk
    :init "/home/user/.emacs.d/init.el"))
#+end_src

By the way, this won't be a "pure" package. When using 
=emacsWithPackagesFromUsePackage= feature from nix-community's emacs-overlay, 
I needed to pass an --impure flag.

> Personally, with my emacs config I do the things vice versa: I have elisp 
> code in scheme files with a list of explicit dependencies:
>
> https://git.sr.ht/~abcdw/rde/tree/b57387f2/src/rde/features/emacs-xyz.scm#L946

Interesting!