From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>
Subject: Re: Profiles/manifests-related command line interface enhancements
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2019 05:00:43 -0400
Message-ID: <87d0emwm95.fsf@netris.org>
References: <87mudrxvs8.fsf@ambrevar.xyz>
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In-Reply-To: <87mudrxvs8.fsf@ambrevar.xyz> (Pierre Neidhardt's message of
 "Wed, 23 Oct 2019 18:37:43 +0200")
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To: Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz>
Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org

Hi Pierre,

Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> writes:

> While playing with multiple profiles and manifests and discussing with
> a couple of people in the community, I collected a number of usability
> issues with Guix when it comes to managing multiple profiles and dealing
> with manifests.
>
> Ideas for new features, more or less from most important to least
> important:
>
> - Activate a profile with =guix activate /path/to/profile=.
>   Right now, the most appropriate way to activate a profile is
>
> GUIX_PROFILE="$profile" ; . "$profile"/etc/profile

Due to the way environment variables work, there's no way to implement
your proposed interface, at least not without changing 'guix' from a
normal program into a Bash shell function.  Programs are unable to
change the environment variable settings of the parent shell that
launched them.

However, we could provide a Bash shell function (with a different name)
that provides conveniences like this.  Users of other shells would not
be able to use the Bash shell function, though.  Ideally, we'd provide
shell functions with a similar interface for several popular shells.
I'm not sure if it's worth it, but it could be done.

      Thanks,
        Mark