Re: Return back original implementation for text-config serialization

[Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prikler@gmail.com>]

Hi Andrew,

Am Sonntag, dem 09.01.2022 um 12:12 +0300 schrieb Andrew Tropin:
> Before fee0bc serialization for text-config worked this way:
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> `("string here"
>   ,#~"string valued gexp"
>   "source \"
>   ,(local-file "blabla.sh"))
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
> 
> would yield something like:
> 
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> string here
> string valued gexp
> source \
> /gnu/store/00fl96dj2aak4i1vqvdqzlhbmmskc7fx-blabla.sh
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
> 
> [...]
> 
> The new text-config serialization implementation (after fee0bc
> commit) doesn't support gexps and tries to insert the literal content
> of the file in place where file-like object was used[.]
I agree that the old one looks nicer in this context, but wasn't the
new one introduced to solve the issue of (slurp-file-gexp) in the
importer?  Meaning whichever way we go, we need something that allows
us to insert literal file contents of another file at more or less G-
exp compile time.

Perhaps that issue could be solved, if instead the importer just reads
the file contents and declares it as a variable as in
(define %bashrc "
;; Original contents of bashrc
")
(define bashrc (plain-file %bashrc)).

WDYT?

> If we want to insert the file path to file-like object for new-style
> text-config internally we do something like
> 
> (mixed-text-file ...
>  "source \" "\n"
>  #~(read-everything-from-file
>     #$(computed-file "unecessary-file-name"
>        #~#$(local-file "blabla.sh"))))
> 
> when originally it was
> (mixed-text-file
>  "source \" "\n"
>  (local-file "blabla.sh"))
Is unnecessary-file-name ever created in this instance?  I think we
have something similar in other locations as well, where G-expressions
are merged -- public keys for substitutes spring to mind.  Perhaps all
it'd need to make use of new-style text configs is a better way of
quoting such things, e.g. a procedure which takes a file-like object
and produces a plain file with its name.

For the record, the use of (read-everything-from-file) in your example
-- a procedure which I'm unable to find in my local Guix checkout --
makes it somewhat difficult to come up with concrete solutions here, so
pardon me for being abstract.


Cheers