Whta is the significance of ~/.cache/guix/profiles?

Whta is the significance of ~/.cache/guix/profiles?

[Unstable Horse]

Good day, people.

I'm trying to GC my system for the first time, and after running this
command:

    guix gc --list-roots | sort -u

Among the expected roots such as guix-profile-*-link and 
current-guix-*-link I also see dozens of lines like this one:

/home/user/.cache/guix/profiles/wjel4twocqclznutccv2mx65a5rxpb6e7lluegd
zsksvdy3lp74a

with just the hash and no name. What are they for? Is it safe to just

    rm -rf ~/.cache/guix/profiles

once in a while, or should I leave them be?

Re: Whta is the significance of ~/.cache/guix/profiles?

[Csepp]

Unstable Horse <stable.master@unstable.horse> writes:

> Good day, people.
>
> I'm trying to GC my system for the first time, and after running this
> command:
>
>     guix gc --list-roots | sort -u
>
> Among the expected roots such as guix-profile-*-link and 
> current-guix-*-link I also see dozens of lines like this one:
>
> /home/user/.cache/guix/profiles/wjel4twocqclznutccv2mx65a5rxpb6e7lluegd
> zsksvdy3lp74a
>
> with just the hash and no name. What are they for? Is it safe to just
>
>     rm -rf ~/.cache/guix/profiles
>
> once in a while, or should I leave them be?

Just guessing based on a quick check of the contents of it on my
machine:  probably serves as a cache of guix shell profiles.

Re: Whta is the significance of ~/.cache/guix/profiles?

[Felix Lechner via]

Hi Unstable Horse,

> Just guessing based on a quick check of the contents of it on my
> machine:  probably serves as a cache of guix shell profiles.

I also think that's what they are.

Removing the links won't save much space, though. You are probably
better off sticking to 'guix gc' unless you have a specific reason.

Kind regards
Felix

Re: Whta is the significance of ~/.cache/guix/profiles?

[wolf]

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Hi,

On 2023-06-28 21:36:28 -0700, Felix Lechner via wrote:
> Hi Unstable Horse,
> 
> > Just guessing based on a quick check of the contents of it on my
> > machine:  probably serves as a cache of guix shell profiles.
> 
> I also think that's what they are.
> 
> Removing the links won't save much space, though. You are probably
> better off sticking to 'guix gc' unless you have a specific reason.

I do not think this is entirely accurate.  The links serve as additional roots
for the garbage collector, so if your remove them, more items from the store can
be collected, possibly a lot more items.  On the other hand, those links should
be automatically cleaned after some time by guix shell.  So if you want to do as
thorough clean as possible, removing the links makes sense, but if you just want
to some light cleaning, you might very well leave it up to the guix shell.

> 
> Kind regards
> Felix
>

W.

-- 
There are only two hard things in Computer Science:
cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.

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Re: Whta is the significance of ~/.cache/guix/profiles?

[Unstable Horse]

On Thu, 2023-06-29 at 02:47 +0200, Csepp wrote:
> Just guessing based on a quick check of the contents of it on my
> machine:  probably serves as a cache of guix shell profiles.

That checks out, I did use guix shell a few times.


On Thu, 2023-06-29 at 10:31 +0200, wolf wrote:
> The links serve as additional roots for the garbage collector, so if
> your remove them, more items from the store can be collected,
> possibly a lot more items.  On the other hand, those links should be
> automatically cleaned after some time by guix shell.  So if you want
> to do as thorough clean as possible, removing the links makes sense,
> but if you just want to some light cleaning, you might very well
> leave it up to the guix shell.

Nice, I didn't know guix shell would eventually clean them up.


Thanks everyone for the info! Also, sorry for the title. :)