Re: guix pull avoidance

[Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>]

On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 04:34:41PM +0200, Vincent Legoll wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> when one does guix pull, it is done only for that user, another one
> doing it subsequently (or at the same time) is going to download
> and compile the whole (identical) thing again, is it possible to switch
> a user to a previously dl'ed revision, like just changing a symlink in
> ~/.guix-profile to point to /gnu/store/*-guix-latest, or something like
> that ?

The 2nd user who does `guix pull` will not recompile if nothing has
changed.

You can change which Guix you use by changing what the symlink at
'~/.config/guix/latest' points to.

The next time you do `guix pull`, this symlink will be rewritten to
point at the result of the `guix pull`. That is, it will point to the
Guix built from the latest HEAD of our master branch.

> I have seen suggestions about using git as a backend for guix pull,
> but until that happen is there an easy way to get the same thing done ?

A lot of us keep a copy of Guix's Git repository, and we use the Guix we
build from that when we need something besides the latest HEAD of the
master branch.

See manual sections 8.1 Building from Git and 8.2 Running Guix Before It
Is Installed for information on how to use Guix from a Git checkout.

Some of us go even farther, and make '~/.config/guix/latest' point to
the Guix we build from Git.