Re: Discussion on Parameterized Packages

[david larsson <david.larsson@selfhosted.xyz>]

On 2023-05-11 17:08, Sarthak Shah wrote:
> Hello Guix!
> I'll be working on bringing Parameterized Packages to Guix for GSoC
> 2023 under the guidance of Gábor and Pjotr. I've been a Guix user for
> a few years now as it works great for Common Lisp and Scheme projects,
> and I've always wanted to contribute to it as it has one of the best
> codebases I've seen. Parameterized Packages will serve as an awesome
> feature that leverages Guix's dedication to ensuring that all packages
> can be compiled from source.
> Parameterized Packages will introduce functionality similar to
> Gentoo's USE flags, making it possible to change compile-time options
> for packages. This will provide users with a lot more freedom over
> what features they'd like to include or exclude from packages, and
> also aid with reducing the size of binaries.
> I have provided a detailed outline of parameterized packages and the
> proposed user interface for interacting with them (for both users and
> maintainers) in this post on my blog:
> https://blog.lispy.tech/2023/05/parameterized-packages.html
> 
> I would really appreciate feedback on
> 
> (1) parameters you'd like to see in Guix
> 
> (2) the user interface for searching/installing/packaging with
> parameters

Im not sure this belongs as a parameter per se, but I would like to see 
something like a stable "parameter", that only uses stable features and 
stable versions of packages when applied on an operating system level 
(which was suggested as being a possible level to apply at in the blog 
post), thus:

   "guix build python-SOMEPACKAGE --with-parameter=stable"

would recursively use only the stable version of the package, including 
stable version of the dependencies.

If this were a thing, Guix could avoid an LTS version, and just run 
GuixLTS via package-parameters - which would be, uhm fun, IMO :-)

Maybe something to put into package-properties 
(https://github.com/guix-mirror/guix/blob/270db2a56bc50bcab5739de2c9393644ab65ac6c/guix/packages.scm#L611)

Best regards,
David