Re: Are declarative app configs worth it?

[Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il>]

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On Wed, Dec 27, 2023 at 08:38:24AM +0100, Sergey Trofimov wrote:
> 
> Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:
> 
> > 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.
> > 
> 
> that adds up to the pile of boilerplate to implement a simple config. If
> guix mandates it for new packages, it'll raise the bar for contribution even
> higher than it already is.
> 
> > > - 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!
> > 
> 
> imo, R and bioinfo should be in channels.

That wasn't a serious suggestion.

> > > - 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.
> > 
> 
> Sure, that's why I wrote "not easily". My non-guix env is a corporate Mac
> laptop. Currently I just clone my dotfiles, symlink required configs and
> it's done. I can make changes in both environments and there is no
> unnecessary "compiling" step involved.

You're not required to use the guix-home bits. I didn't for a long time,
and there are still a lot of config files that I have that I either
symlink into place or I write out in my guix-home config file to be
splatted into place.  I still regularly scp my .screenrc and .inputrc to
other machines.

> > > 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.
> > 
> That would be great.

Most services have an extra-options (or similarly named) field where you
can add extra bits to the config.

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Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   רנשלפ םירפא
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