Guix Channel News Does not work on Foreign Distros for Custom Channels (ignoring Debian)

Guix Channel News Does not work on Foreign Distros for Custom Channels (ignoring Debian)

[jgart]

Hi Guixers,

What configurations can affect the visibility of channel news after a `guix pull`?

On Debian, after doing a `sudo apt install guix` I am able to see channel news for custom channels I've added to my channels.scm file.

I can't determine what is allowing that but maybe Vagrant knows?

On void linux, I don't see channel news for a custom channel.

How do you suggest I debug this?

Let me know what configuration files I should share here.

all best,

jgart

Re: Guix Channel News Does not work on Foreign Distros for Custom Channels (ignoring Debian)

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2022 at 08:05:41PM -0400, jgart wrote:
> On void linux, I don't see channel news for a custom channel.
> 
> How do you suggest I debug this?

Assuming you have previously pulled a channel version before the
commit of the news entry and then pull a channel version after, the
news should be displayed.  If not, I’d try to run

guix repl

and then copy all contents of

~/.config/guix/current/share/guile/site/3.0/guix/scripts/pull.scm

and paste them into the repl and press enter.

Then I’d try what

(display-news %current-profile)

prints (if anything).

Then I’d try to repeat the same after I surround interesting parts of
the display-news or display-channel-specific-news procedures with

(pk …)

for example instead of

(generation-file-name profile previous))

write

(pk (generation-file-name profile previous)))

Hope it helps.

Regards,
Florian

P.S. I would also try the debug feature

,trace (display-news %current-profile)

but it has no effect for me.

Re: Guix Channel News Does not work on Foreign Distros for Custom Channels (ignoring Debian)

[jgart]

On Sat, 23 Apr 2022 15:49:51 +0200 "pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2022 at 08:05:41PM -0400, jgart wrote:
> Then I’d try what
> 
> (display-news %current-profile)
> 
> prints (if anything).

Hi Florian,

Thanks for the help!

This is what I get:

```
scheme@(guix scripts pull)>
(display-news %current-profile)

guix repl: no channel news since generation 28
hint: Run `guix pull -l' to view the news for earlier generations.
```


> Then I’d try to repeat the same after I surround interesting parts of
> the display-news or display-channel-specific-news procedures with
> 
> (pk …)
> 
> for example instead of
> 
> (generation-file-name profile previous))
> 
> write
> 
> (pk (generation-file-name profile previous)))

What are the argument types of profile and previous in
`generation-file-name`? strings or absolute path to a profile and string?

Could you share an explicit example of how to call `generation-file-name`?

It would be much appreciated. Maybe we can work on documenting the
function further here for others as a result of that.

all best,

jgart

Re: Guix Channel News Does not work on Foreign Distros for Custom Channels (ignoring Debian)

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

Hi jgart.


Now that I think about it -- there are cases when the news simply
won’t be displayed, namely if the commit referred to in the news entry
was already present in the old commit.

Could this be the case, that the news file refers to a commit you
already had before pulling?

Then the only way to view the news would be

guix pull --list-generations



On Sat, Apr 23, 2022 at 01:51:19PM -0400, jgart wrote:
> scheme@(guix scripts pull)>
> (display-news %current-profile)
> 
> guix repl: no channel news since generation 28
> hint: Run `guix pull -l' to view the news for earlier generations.

OK, so this will always be the same output as `guix pull -N`.


> > Then I’d try to repeat the same after I surround interesting parts of
> > the display-news or display-channel-specific-news procedures with
> > 
> > (pk …)
> > 
> > for example instead of
> > 
> > (generation-file-name profile previous))
> > 
> > write
> > 
> > (pk (generation-file-name profile previous)))
> 
> What are the argument types of profile and previous in
> `generation-file-name`? strings or absolute path to a profile and string?
> 
> Could you share an explicit example of how to call `generation-file-name`?
>

What I meant to say is pull.scm contains a line

(generation-file-name profile previous))

which you can replace by

(pk (generation-file-name profile previous)))

to peek at which generation-file-name is used for the channel news.

The goal is to find out at which point pull.scm does something
unexpected.

Now this was a bad example, since the generation-file-name does not
seem so interesting.  But you could try change within pull.scm

(match (channel-news-for-commit channel new old)

to

(match (channel-news-for-commit (pk channel) (pk new) (pk old))

which would be expected to show the same information as `guix
describe` before and after the last guix pull.

This would be expected to contain anything that was added to the news
file.

Regards,
Florian

Re: Guix Channel News Does not work on Foreign Distros for Custom Channels (ignoring Debian)

[jgart]

On Sun, 24 Apr 2022 02:50:12 +0200 "pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> wrote:
> Hi jgart.
> 
> 
> Now that I think about it -- there are cases when the news simply
> won’t be displayed, namely if the commit referred to in the news entry
> was already present in the old commit.
> 
> Could this be the case, that the news file refers to a commit you
> already had before pulling?
> 
> Then the only way to view the news would be
> 
> guix pull --list-generations

I still do not get any news for the custom channel when I run `guix pull --list-generations`.

On Debian it works but on Void Linux I must have something not set up that I can't pin point at the moment.

Re: Guix Channel News Does not work on Foreign Distros for Custom Channels (ignoring Debian)

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

On Sun, Apr 24, 2022 at 02:01:55AM -0400, jgart wrote:
> I still do not get any news for the custom channel when I run `guix pull --list-generations`.
> 
> On Debian it works but on Void Linux I must have something not set up that I can't pin point at the moment.

News entries for commits before you had set up the channel will not
show up.  But assuming the news entry is for a commit you had already
pulled sometime in the past,

guix pull --list-generations

must show it.  If you double-checked that, you should check by pasting
into `guix repl` the pull.scm file with the pk added around new and
old, note the output, and file a bug to bug-guix@gnu.org, saying that
you already discussed it on help-guix.

Regards,
Florian