Re: guix is the guildhall that we always wanted!

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hello!

Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> skribis:

> Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> So!  My proposal for this new "guildhall" would be:
>>
>>     1. a web service
>>
>>     2. on which users registers projects
>>
>>     3. a project is a name + a git repository with a /package.scm file
>>
>>     4. the package.scm contains Guix package definitions for that project
>
> We need to keep all Guix package definitions within Guix itself, for the
> same reason that Linux (the kernel) developers insist on keeping all
> device drivers within a single monolithic tree.  If we start encouraging
> a decentralized approach, that would result in strong pressure on us to
> freeze our API, which includes even such details as which module each
> package is exported from.  This would drastically reduce the freedom
> Guix has to evolve the way its packages are specified.

I think having repos maintained elsewhere is OKish, but it’s true that
it requires people who maintain those repos to follow closely what’s
going on in Guix proper because we’re not guaranteeing API stability.

There’s a couple of ways to mitigate potential API instability: using
‘specification->package’ instead of referring to packages by variable
name, and using (guix) and (gnu) instead of more specific modules.

So I think having an external repo for guildhall would be possible, but
we need to make sure the connection to Guix APIs is loose enough.

Also, guildhall would be a privileged “customer” I suppose.  :-)

Ludo’.