From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Pjotr Prins Subject: Re: [PATCH] Add yaggo. Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2015 21:23:37 +0200 Message-ID: <20150624192337.GA32347@thebird.nl> References: <558A3377.6060301@uq.edu.au> <20150624055137.GA29505@thebird.nl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:60085) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z7qHc-0003St-8z for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 24 Jun 2015 15:24:29 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z7qHZ-0001v6-2h for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 24 Jun 2015 15:24:28 -0400 Received: from mail.thebird.nl ([95.154.246.10]:33889) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z7qHY-0001uc-Tk for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 24 Jun 2015 15:24:25 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: "Thompson, David" Cc: "guix-devel@gnu.org" On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 08:32:51AM -0400, Thompson, David wrote: > I don't know about $GEM_SPEC_CACHE, but $GEM_HOME cannot be a native > search path that is part of our ruby packages, because native search > paths are relative to store items, which are immutable. My feeling is > that if the user wants to use the 'gem' utility instead of using Guix > packages, they're going to have to set an environment variable or two > by themselves. It is just a convenience. I believe GNU Guix should allow extra package systems - like those of emacs. So point GEM_HOME to something that is not immutable. > > which would install directly from rubygems.org (including contained > > dependencies when missing in the existing environment). > > Are you saying that it would bundle the dependencies if there were no > Guix packages for them? Exactly. > > This would greatly facilitate adding Ruby gems to guix. > > I must reiterate my concern about this approach to the wider > guix-devel audience. From what I can see, the gem archives hosted on > rubygems.org are build artifacts and should probably be treated like > pre-built binaries. They are not the complete, corresponding source > code. Can anyone else weigh in here? I understand the convenience of > using rubygems.org, but I really need some evidence that the archives > hosted there are complete, corresponding source code. Please see it as a migration path. There are tens of thousands of useful gems out there with complex dependencies. There is no way we are going to replace and test those overnight. Same for Python and Perl modules (and all those other languages with their own module system). I do favour pure Guix packages, also for gems, so we should aim for replacing the most important ones over time. Making it hard(er) to install gems from GNU Guix for normal users will only slow down adoption. Allow using rubygems for those gems that are not (yet) supported by us. When enough Ruby people move to using Guix for their development we may get rid of rubygems altogether. I would love that. I already got rid of rvm :) Nix experimented by converting all gems to Nix packages, that is another possibility. But I think they proved it is hard and now defunct (correct me if I am wrong). Pj.