Data dirs and shepherd services

Data dirs and shepherd services

[Edouard KLEIN]

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Hi guys !

I'm packaging a piece of software that is due in the next few days and I'm
cutting corners everywhere. I'll come back to it later and clean things up,
in the process I've packaged some free software lacking from the
distribution, that I'll send the patches for.

In the meantime, I have some questions:

- My software needs to serve a bunch of static files. Those belong to a
package that is 'propagated-input' installed with the big metapackage of
the whole software.
By using
$guix package list-installed
I can see the store directory of the metapackage, but the propagated-inputs
packages are not listed, and I don't know how to find their store
directories. The question here is multifold:
- Those static files are linked in .guix-profile: is referring to those
links the correct way of referring to them ? Because I need to serve them
via a webserver and I don't want to serve my whole .guix-profile dir, it
may prove cumbersome.
- Is there a way of knowing the store dir of an arbitrary package ? Would
this be the correct way of referring to those static files ?
- Can I specify an out-of-store static dir (such as e.g. /opt/var/www)
where to copy or link the files when installing the package ? Ideally I'd
like to do that in the package description, but a command line switch would
be OK as well.


Next, my software needs a temp zone where to store user files (those can be
destroyed across reboots). This zone should be organized with multiple
dirs, some static files, etc. I assume the store dir of the package is not
the correct place to put these dirs, yet it is the only directory in which
I know how to create things in the package description.
- Is it OK to use the store dir as a user-provided data storage place ? I
assume not.
- How can I specify an out-of-store storage place (e.g.
/opt/share/my_software)  in the package description ?
- Failing that, how can I specify it as a command line flag ?


Finally, I hope to use GNU shepherd to start my software, but the
documentation on how to write a service is not there yet:
https://www.gnu.org/software/shepherd/manual/shepherd.html#Service-Examples

Do you know of any examples I could draw inspiration from ?


Cheers, and thanks in advance for the help :)

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Re: Data dirs and shepherd services

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi Edouard,

> - My software needs to serve a bunch of static files. Those belong to a
> package that is 'propagated-input' installed with the big metapackage of
> the whole software.
> By using
> $guix package list-installed
> I can see the store directory of the metapackage, but the propagated-inputs
> packages are not listed, and I don't know how to find their store
> directories. The question here is multifold:
> - Those static files are linked in .guix-profile: is referring to those
> links the correct way of referring to them ? Because I need to serve them
> via a webserver and I don't want to serve my whole .guix-profile dir, it
> may prove cumbersome.

The way I would do this is to add a build phase that creates a link to
the the directory of the other package that should be served.  Then you
only need to serve the target package’s “share/<name>/public” (or
similar) directory.

> - Is there a way of knowing the store dir of an arbitrary package ? Would
> this be the correct way of referring to those static files ?

Yes.  When you do this in a build phase all you need to do is refer to
the other package via “(assoc-ref inputs "label")”, where “inputs” is
bound to the list of all package inputs and “label” is the string label
that identifies the input you are interested in.

On the command line you can get the store path to any package by using
“guix build the-package”.  The result is the store path.

> - Can I specify an out-of-store static dir (such as e.g. /opt/var/www)
> where to copy or link the files when installing the package ? Ideally I'd
> like to do that in the package description, but a command line switch would
> be OK as well.

No, you can’t do that as part of the package build.  Packages can only
write to their very own build output directory (or “directories” when
using more than one output); they are all under /gnu/store.

You can, however, specify a Guix system service, which *can* access
otehr locations when started.  That’s also how we would accomplish the
“temp zone” (see below).

> Next, my software needs a temp zone where to store user files (those can be
> destroyed across reboots). This zone should be organized with multiple
> dirs, some static files, etc. I assume the store dir of the package is not
> the correct place to put these dirs

That’s correct.

> - Is it OK to use the store dir as a user-provided data storage place ? I
> assume not.

It is not okay.  The store is read-only.

> - How can I specify an out-of-store storage place (e.g.
> /opt/share/my_software)  in the package description ?

You can do this with system services only.  We have a bunch of services
that set up /var/cache or /run/foo and then run the executable provided
by a package with a generated configuration file referencing these
locations.

> Finally, I hope to use GNU shepherd to start my software, but the
> documentation on how to write a service is not there yet:
> https://www.gnu.org/software/shepherd/manual/shepherd.html#Service-Examples
>
> Do you know of any examples I could draw inspiration from ?

This depends on what kind of setup is required for your service.  A
system service may include a shepherd service, but it can do more than
that.  You could, for example, look at the service for Cuirass (the CI
system we use for Guix), which is a web server with a database; the
system service sets up the directories and includes a shepherd service
that starts the web server.

Hope that helps!

--
Ricardo