Re: chicken scheme

[John J Foerch <jjfoerch@earthlink.net>]

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> John J Foerch <jjfoerch@earthlink.net> skribis:
>
>> ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>>
>>> John J Foerch <jjfoerch@earthlink.net> skribis:
>>>
>>>> I have just learned about 'guix import', and have the thought that a
>>>> package importer would be the better way to go.  Eventually I would like
>>>> to package software that I've written in CHICKEN for GuixSD, and only a
>>>> package importer would make that feasible.
>>>
>>> "Thompson, David" <dthompson2@worcester.edu> skribis:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 8:11 AM, John J Foerch <jjfoerch@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> First a question about /var/lib, and please excuse the newbie question.
>>>>> If chicken extensions were installed to /var/lib, wouldn't that go
>>>>> against the spirit of guix of keeping every program isolated?  Isn't
>>>>> /var/lib global state?
>>>>
>>>> Yes, but this program is not Guix. It's a completely separate package
>>>> manager, and it should work as intended.
>>>
>>> Agreed.  So I think there are two issues at hand:
>>>
>>>   1. How to arrange our ‘chicken’ package so that ‘chicken-install’
>>>      works as intended.
>>>
>>>   2. How to import Eggs so that they can be first-class Guix packages.
>>>
>>> #2, which means writing an importer, is definitely the most profitable
>>> approach: It’s best as a user to have all the packages managed by the
>>> same tool, especially if that provides isolation, transactional upgrades
>>> and rollbacks, etc.
>>>
>>> #1 is useful for CHICKEN users who are used to ‘chicken-install’
>>> (similarly pip, npm, etc. are supposed to work.)  It should work in the
>>> same way as on other distros.  I’ve never used it though, so I can’t
>>> give precise advice.
>>>
>>
>> It installs all extensions to a single system-wide directory, with one
>> path component that gives the binary version.  On my debian machine,
>> that is /var/lib/chicken/7 (for chicken 4.10.0).  In that way, it is
>> simpler than something like npm.
>
> Right.  So to address #1, we should make sure it uses /var/lib, as
> discussed earlier.
>

I'm finally getting back to this.  One point about chicken is that it
does not support multiple extension directories, only one.  They go into
<VARDIR>/chicken/<BINARY-VERSION>.  This introduces a difficulty because
if VARDIR is /var/lib, then the default extensions (that come with
chicken) get installed to a global directory.  The chicken-install
system will then work, but in the future when we add a package importer,
imported packages would also go into this global directory.

If on the other hand, VARDIR is (string-append out "/var/lib") the
default extensions and imported extensions go to the right place, but
manual chicken-install cannot write to that location.

Any further thoughts on this, given that information?

-- 
John Foerch