Re: Proof of Concept: Import Emacs' use-packaged packages into Guix' manifest.scm

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

Am Sonntag, dem 18.12.2022 um 01:54 +0000 schrieb Mekeor Melire:
> Nevertheless, for me, personally, it's pretty neat and handy to 
> use, because I don't need to maintain the list of emacs-packages 
> in two places. I also think that it could come pretty handy for 
> many others, at least in order to initialize their user-profile, 
> by running something like ~guix package -e '(some-magic 
> "/home/user/.emacs.d/init.el")'~.
I think we should be able to build an Emacs service in Guix Home that
can manage init.el.  As a workaround, use-package should also have a
:when clause, so you can use :when (featurep 'some-package-autoloads)
if you're unsure whether 'some-package is actually installed.  This
makes your init file a little more resilient and is particularly useful
with pure shells.

> What do you think? Should this go into a separate, private 
> channel? Into the Guix Cookbook? Into Guix, if so, then probably 
> with lots of changes? Should it just stay here, in this mailing 
> list thread? Or do you think this is just a bad idea in general?
Given the caveats, I would rather like to see an Emacs Lisp based
script that mocks use-package and generates a manifest by evaluting
init.el.  This should give you more correct results.  It's not a bad
idea per se, but as-is, I think it would better be maintained in your
own channel before upstreaming.

For upstreaming, I see two potential paths.  The first one would be
integration to `guix home import', which Andrew Tropin (CC'd) could
probably tell you more on.  The second would be integration into `guix
package' as a callable function/command line argument, but IMHO that's
less likely to pass.


Cheers