Re: A friendlier API for operating-system declarations

[Edouard Klein <edou@rdklein.fr>]

Hi !
Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> Hi Edouard,
>
> Edouard Klein <edk@beaver-labs.com> skribis:
>
>> For my clients and my own use, I use a layer on top of operating-system
>> declarations in which I create functions that take an os as a first
>> argument, and return an os.
>>
>> With the help of the handy -> macro, I can chain them, thus allowing an
>> easy stacking of multiple "roles" or "functionalities" on the same
>> machine, and an easy transfer of said functionality to another machine:
>> just cut and paste one line from one declaration to the other.
>>
>> I have written a tutorial for my clients here:
>>
>> https://guix-hosting.com/docs/tuto/getting-started.html
>
> Very nice!
>

:)

>> After a few months of experience, and positive feedback from my clients,
>> my question to you guys is: would you be interested in mainlining this,
>> or should I keep my development efforts separate in my channel ?
>
> I think it’s worth considering, taking into account maintenance
> considerations as Liliana wrote.
>

Indeed. This was started as a quick and dirty overlay over guix to make
it easier for people used to Ansible to deal with declarative OS
configuration with guix, but it now need to be easy to maintain.

>> I do think this API is easier than manipulating services, and although
>> extendable services are awesome and a very nifty piece of engineering,
>> they require quite a good knowledge of scheme and take a while to be
>> used to, while this new API, while way less powerful, lowers the barrier
>> to entry for newcomers.
>
> Normally, adding a service amounts to adding a line in the ‘services’
> field:
>
>   (operating-system
>     ;; …
>     (services (append (list (service nginx-service-type) …)
>                       %base-services)))
>
> It is more verbose that what you have, but it’s still roughly one line
> (or one entry) per service.
>

You wouldn't believe the irrational fear of nested parentheses some
people have ;-)

I do agree a purely functional interface to OS declaration wouldn't
bring much over the existing one. My goal is to then compose those
primitive functions into usually-used-together bundles, such as e.g.
nginx+gunicorn+flask in a function called, maybe, 'python-webapp'.

This is kind of subjective, though. I have my own usage and some
customer feedback to guide me, but we can keep it on my channel until we
feel confident that the additional value is worth the maintenance cost.


> Another interesting bit in your channel are templates though: an OS
> template for hosting at OVH, etc.  These are very valuable because they
> take care of all the boilerplate.
>

I'd be happy to mainline it. I'll submit a patch when I get back home.


> Thanks for sharing!
>

Well thanks to you for starting the whole schmilblick.

> Ludo’.

Edouard.