Re: Suboptimal experience

[Julien Lepiller <julien@lepiller.eu>]

Le 2018-06-18 17:01, Dan Partelly a écrit :
> Well, retried again a git pull today. It broke with no backtrace (an
> exception while printing backtrace)
> ERROR: In procedure private-lookup: No variable bound to
> define-module* in module (guile)
> 
> cannot build derivation for /gnu/store/sha…guix-32eb44240-modules.drv:
> 1 dependencies could not be built
> cannot build derivation for /gnu/store/sha…guix-32eb44240.drv: 1
> dependencies could not be built

This is a bug in guix pull. It has already been reported and we're 
working
on a fix. That shouldn't cause any issue on your side: the failure to 
pull
simply means that your guix wasn't updated. As a workaround, you can try 
again
as long as it fails in this way. "guix pull --cores=1" might help too.

The error is not in the package definitions, it's more likely a race 
condition
introduced with the recent guix pull update.

> 
> I do not know whats going on, but one two things are sure:
> 
> 1. If is true that any packager can break the build of guix by
> commiting a bad package definition, then the whole packaging system
> design is **FLAWED** in my opinion. A system which is so brittle has
> no place in an industrial environment, at least until such issues are
> permanently resolved.  Yes, Mark was nice enough to say you can build
> it from source and it works better, but to be honest, when I work with
> an OS I just want tools which do work and make my life easier, not
> spit error after error for days. If I need to build a repository, it
> must be because i want to modify something or customize some software,
> not because the OS itself burps .

Sorry about the bad experience :/ As I said, all this is due to the fact 
that
guix evolves really fast. That's also the reason why we still consider 
it
beta. Had you tested it a few days earlier, everything would have been
going smoothly.

> 
> 2. A package manager which fails time and again to build itself
> doesn't present itself as very trustworthy. It may be very well be,
> but adoption of software is governed by social factors more than
> technical excellence. GuixSD for now is very nice and cool, but its a
> hacking playground, not an industrial strength OS which you deliver
> without worry.
> 
> So please excuse me if I give a bit of unsolicited advice, please fix
> all those before going 1.0.  It does not gives a good impression on
> the OS. I believe its important for your future marketing and your
> goals to further free software in this world.

Thank you for your advice :) I think you're right: we are still beta, so
errors are to be expected from time to time. We should fix them before 
we
go 1.0. That said, the system is robust enough that you can always 
recover
from said errors.

> 
> 
> 
>> On Jun 18, 2018, at 14:11, swedebugia <swedebugia@riseup.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi
>> 
>> On June 17, 2018 9:51:51 PM GMT+02:00, Dan Partelly 
>> <dan_partelly@rdsor.ro> wrote:
>>> HI Mark
>> 
>> [...]
>> 
>>> For any “guix system …. “ the message was:
>>> 
>>> guix: system: command not found .
>> 
>> I experienced this as well today after guix pull from 0.14 to commit 
>> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/commit/?id=b4eae997fe5b928f179c34d281e9f2c3eccd3670 
>> if I remember correctly.
>> 
>> I just understood from the previous reply that running guix pull again 
>> will solve the problem. I will try later and report back the result.
>> 
>> --
>> Cheers Swedebugia