Re: Guix home package confusion

[Tangonov <tn@eml.cc>]

Thanks for the reply. I of course felt the need to keep trying 
after I messaged you. Call it determination (or impatience). I had 
manged to do such a good job of addressing my own questions that I 
ended up breaking my home environment.

In the end, I ended up logging in as root, deleting my profile 
symlinks for my user and garbage collecting my user state.

From there I was able to install my manifest from scratch using 
guix home.

I am still pretty confused about the relationship between guix 
package, guix home and how they interact with packages. It seems 
like I can install many packages by invoking guix install, and 
then one system home reconfigure would undo my links to those 
packages if they aren't included in the home configuration. So it 
seems like I should maintain my package manifest should my 
interests in which packages to keep or discard should change above 
and beyond a base system.

What's more confusing is after I installed from a clean slate, my 
pinentry broke for gpg. It was fixed by invoking guix install 
pinentry, which required no download or build for pinentry. It 
seems like the de-duplication worked in that case, but I now have 
(again) two divergent records of which packages I should, or 
should not have.

It feels like I am swinging at a nail with my thumb in the path of 
the hammer.

What exactly is the intended use of guix home?

I am happy to provide my configurations, though, they have evolved 
since my initial message.
Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il> writes:

> [[PGP Signed Part:Undecided]]
> On Tue, Jun 14, 2022 at 08:05:45AM -0700, Tangonov wrote:
>> I am trying out guix for the first time and feel like I may 
>> have jumped in
>> head-first into the shallow end of the pool.
>> 
>> I had started out with using guix package for my packages and 
>> updated my env
>> for around 30 generations. Then I discovered guix home and 
>> thought "hey,
>> that may be better".
>> 
>> I set up guix home following the documentation and it created 
>> my first home
>> generation and completely re-installed my packages.
>> 
>> However, after subsequent changes to my home config, a guix 
>> home reconfigure
>> is now attempting to re-install (and build) my packages all 
>> over again,
>> despite never having run a guix pull.
>> 
>> I tried to "undo" the initialization of guix home as I feel 
>> like I maybe
>> should stick to the "older way" for a while longer while I get 
>> the hang of
>> Guile Scheme and try not to change too much at once. I have 
>> been unable to
>> revert my initial revision, or find a clear path back without 
>> doing
>> something dramatic.
>> 
>> With all of my history in mind, I have 3 questions:
>> 
>> 1. Is there a supported way to apply incremental changes in 
>> guix home,
>> without re-doing (and re-compiling) all of my software?
>> 2. Is there a supported way to revert back to just using GNU 
>> Stow and guix
>> package?
>> 3. If I can be happy with guix home, is there any supported way 
>> to remove
>> potential bloat from having run guix package for 30 
>> generations?
>> 
>> Thanks for the incredible software and help, if you're able.
>> 
>
> I suppose the quick answer is to make sure you don't have 'guix' 
> as one
> of the packages in your config.
>
> If you share your config we might be able to see if anything 
> sticks out.