Re: Using Guix archive (Help!)

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hello!

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> skribis:

>> somehow propagated-inputs don't go into the archive. You'd think they are critical
>> dependencies.
>>
>>   Q1: is that to be expected?
>
> I’m not sure, but it seems wrong.

I understand it’s weird, but it’s expected: ‘guix archive’ is a
low-level thing that works at the store level.  Propagated inputs are a
package-level concept, so it doesn’t know about it.

>> NAR files are signed. I think it would be very useful to be able to
>> distribute unsigned NAR files.
>>
>>   Q2: can signing/checking be made optional?

No, on purpose.

However unsigned archives would be useful for content-addressed items
(e.g., source code downloads), and it’s currently not supported.

>>   Q3: how do we view the contents of a NAR file without unpacking it?
>
> I don’t think you can.  It’s a custom format implemented by
> nix/libutil/archive.cc.

It’s also implemented in (guix nar).  :-)

So it Wouldn’t Be Hard to implement a content browsers and support “guix
archive -t”.

Ludo’.