Re: Guix Goals: One Hackable Developer Tool To Rule Them All

[indieterminacy <indieterminacy@libre.brussels>]

Sorry if this comes off as facetious (because this is an interesting 
proposal) but hasnt Make cornered a lot of these usecases well enough?

On 13-10-2022 15:56, pinoaffe wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I think that (if done well) this would greatly simplify my workflow in
> many software projects, so I think it's a good idea.
> 
> In the rest of my email, I more or less assume that there is a
> one-to-one correspondence between software projects and guix packages,
> even though this is clearly not the case.  I nonetheless make this
> assumption since it is the case (or can be made the case) for many of
> the software projects on which one might want to work using guix.
> 
> jgart <jgart@dismail.de> writes:
>> The various language ecosystems have their own linters, formatters,
>> typecheckers, repls, test runners, etc.
>> 
>> What if Guix could manage them all?
>> 
>> `guix lint` in a python project would run mypy.
>> `guix lint` in a haskell project would run hlint.
>> `guix lint` in an erlang project would run dialyzer.
> 
> These would require some sort of configurability, since most
> languages/projects have not just one linter.  Even if there's a
> "monopoly" there might be different settings/versions of said linter.
> 
> Do you propose that such configuration is added to packages?  Or should
> this go somewhere else?
> 
> Furthermore, in many projects there are various different languages at
> once (e.g., a python webapp with client-side javascript and css), so it
> would probably be useful to mirror the build-phases approach in guix
> packaging.  It might even be possible to set up (somewhat) sane 
> defaults
> based on the build-system used by the local project.
> 
>> `guix fmt` in a python project would run black.
>> `guix fmt` in a haskell project would run ormolu.
>> `guix fmt` in a erlang project would run erlfmt.
> 
> My comments regarding linters apply here as well
> 
>> `guix repl` in a python project would run ptpython or some other 
>> configured repl.
>> `guix repl` in a haskell project would run ghci.
>> `guix repl` in a erlang project would run erl.
> 
> This should be fairly easy to implement, assuming that there is just 
> one
> repl associated to each project one might want to use this command 
> with.
> It should (imo) be possible to configure/pass arguments to the repl on 
> a
> per-project basis and whenever you run `guix repl`
> 
>> `guix test` in a python project would run pytest or unittest.
>> `guix test` in a haskell project would run hunit.
>> `guix test` in a erlang project would run eunit.
> 
> Should I read this as a proposal to add an extra command to build (and
> test) the local project's guix package, or do you propose to make this
> do something different?  Because I'm not sure the latter would be a 
> good
> idea, if there is a need to do testing in some other way than currently
> possible I'd think it would be more valuable (and more clean) to extend
> the current testing facilities to incorporate this.
> 
>> `guix run` in a python project could start a flask app listening on a 
>> particular port.
>> `guix run` in a ruby project could start a puma server.
>> `guix run` in a haskell project could run a pre-configured script or 
>> Main.hs
>> `guix run` in a erlang project could start a cowboy server.
> 
> I'm not sure how widely this may be applicable, since many projects or
> packages don't have just one way to run them, they may even contain
> several different executables or modules.
> 
>> The idea would be to have Guix provide a configurable CLI wrapper
>> subcommand around all language ecosystem developer tools. In other 
>> words
>> it's the same Guixy thesis applied to developer tooling. I think this
>> could take the Guix developer experience to the next level.
> 
> Kind regards,
> pinoaffe

-- 
Jonathan McHugh
indieterminacy@libre.brussels