Starting 'core-updates'?

[Marius Bakke <mbakke@fastmail.com>]

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Hello Guix,

The 'core-updates' branch is starting to look pretty good, and I am
happy to report that it "works for me".  :-)

Some of the big changes include:

* Large parts of Guix can now be cross-compiled, allowing building Guix
  System for foreign architectures without emulation.

* Python was updated to 3.8.1, and most of the popular packages such as
  Pytest are at the latest available versions.

* The 'libjpeg' library has been deprecated in favor of 'libjpeg-turbo'.

* 'util-linux' gained a "lib" output, decreasing the closure size of
  packages that only need the libraries by ~11.5 MiB.

* 'boost' now uses Python 3 by default.

* 'sqlite-with-column-metadata' has been merged with 'sqlite'.

* The quest to remove static libraries from core packages is ongoing.
  Many packages are a tiny bit smaller for that reason.  On the flip
  side, the closure size of some packages increased, because they are
  forced to use the shared library instead of embedding a static copy.

* cmake-build-system's support for cross-compilation is significantly
  improved.  CMake itself also no longer bundles any of its dependencies
  (even if they were mostly unused).

* Of course we have the latest versions of core packages such as glibc,
  make, sed, binutils, etc.

I suggest that we set a "freeze" date shortly after FOSDEM to start
integrating it.  Are there other branches that should be included?
Maybe wip-bootstrap or GNOME 3.34?

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