Re: Are declarative app configs worth it?

["Nguyễn Gia Phong via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." <guix-devel@gnu.org>]

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On 2023-12-26 at 17:50+01:00, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> Nguyễn Gia Phong <cnx@loang.net> writes:
> > On 2023-12-26 at 15:56+01:00, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> >> On 2023-12-26 at 14:53+01:00, Sergey Trofimov wrote:
> >> > - 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.
> >
> > This is easier said than done.  A program could […]
>
> Yes, it’s easy to say a lot of things.  This is not an argument against
> providing tests *where feasible*.

I'm not against tests, but pointing out that relying on automated
tests to detect breakage is an unrealisitic expectation
for most programs.

On 2023-12-26 at 17:50+01:00, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> > I would also want to share my experience as a user, that having
> > to run guix home reconfigure iteratively is not exactly pleasant
> > due to the high delay.
>
> What’s a high delay?  Is a one second reconfiguration too long for what
> it does?  I don’t think so.

Any reconfig that isn't cached takes over 5s on my fairly modern
amd64 laptop, which is considerable for the repetitive
edit-config-then-test flow.  Even a cached home takes a whole 2s.

Reconfiguration just rebuild each config file in guix store regardless
if it's changed, so running it is a wasite of time and resources.

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