Re: Are declarative app configs worth it?

[Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net>]

Sergey Trofimov <sarg@sarg.org.ru> writes:

> - adding it to guix increases maintenance burden: new versions   could
>  add or remove config options

This is why there should be automated tests.  There are too few of them.

> - it requires documentation/translation, another hidden cost

We should only accept configuration procedures that have proper
documentation, yes.

> - it bloats guix: imagine if we add configs for every
>   user-configurable app

That would be nice.

If we started to accept the term bloat we could easily apply it to
anything in Guix: all that R stuff?  Bloat!  All that bioinfo stuff?
Bloat!

> - such configs are not easily transferrable: if I were to use the
>   same app in non-guix env, I'd have to maintain 2 configs

We are generating configuration files from our config languages.  So you
would only need to generate them and copy them for your non-guix
environment.

> Another recent example is `oci-container-configuration` which defines
> a subset of docker-cli startup arguments. The problem is that `docker
> run` command has 96 options and the configuration only uses a handful,
> lacking a way to provide the remaining ones.

All config bindings need to have an escape hatch.

-- 
Ricardo