guix edit mutt -- with new option, and dependency, how I got it working

guix edit mutt -- with new option, and dependency, how I got it working

[Jean Louis]

Hello,

I wish to share how I got this working:

I wanted to do command:

guix edit mutt

only that one could not edit the file, so I have saved the file locally.

Andreas Enge pointed that I have to do following:

From: Andreas Enge
To: Jean Louis
Cc: 22970-done@debbugs.gnu.org, help-guix@gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#22970: guix edit mutt -- not working

On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 12:22:20AM +0100, Jean Louis wrote:
> And I could not save the file in my home directory, and do:
> guix package -i mutt -f mail.scm

As mentioned on IRC, modify the file mail.scm by adding a line
   mutt
at the end. Then
   guix package -f mail.scm
does "install the package that the code within FILE evaluates to" as
explained by "guix package --help". mail.scm itself does not evaluate
to anything, it just contains a number of variable definitions. By adding
the line, it "returns" the value of the variable mutt, which is your
package definition.

Better yet, use GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH, for instance as follows:
   export GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH=$HOME/guix
Then create the same file layout in that directory as in the source code:
   mkdir -p $HOME/guix/gnu/packages
Copy mail.scm there, modify mutt, then
   guix package -i mutt
will first look for your modified package.

So, I have done that with file:

~/gnu/guix/packages/mutt.scm

which is attached.

And I have added, dependency "gdbm" for the option --enable-hcache to
have it working:

(inputs
 `(("cyrus-sasl" ,cyrus-sasl)
	 ("gpgme" ,gpgme)
	 ("gdbm" ,gdbm)

and

     `(#:configure-flags '("--enable-smtp"
                           "--enable-imap"
                           "--enable-pop"
                           "--enable-gpgme"
                           "--enable-hcache"


Jean Louis

Re: guix edit mutt -- with new option, and dependency, how I got it working

[Leo Famulari]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 01:44:47AM +0100, Jean Louis wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I wish to share how I got this working:

[...]

> So, I have done that with file:
> 
> ~/gnu/guix/packages/mutt.scm
> 
> which is attached.
> 
> And I have added, dependency "gdbm" for the option --enable-hcache to
> have it working:
> 
> (inputs
>  `(("cyrus-sasl" ,cyrus-sasl)
> 	 ("gpgme" ,gpgme)
> 	 ("gdbm" ,gdbm)
> 
> and
> 
>      `(#:configure-flags '("--enable-smtp"
>                            "--enable-imap"
>                            "--enable-pop"
>                            "--enable-gpgme"
>                            "--enable-hcache"

Cool, I'm glad you got that working.

Do you think this option (--enable-hcache) should be in our default mutt
package? Would all mutt users benefit from it? Or is it something
specific to your use case?

Re: guix edit mutt -- with new option, and dependency, how I got it working

[Jean Louis]

Hello Leo,

I was using mutt on Debian, that option was always included:
header_cache

- mutt accesses remote emails
- this speeds up everything
- GuixSD already includes gdbm and tokyocabinet
- I have chosen gdbm, but testing could show if else is better

Imagine, when you have 2000-3000 emails, one need to wait long time, for
mutt to read all the headers, seconds. This way it is 1 second. 

It should be included by default, as GuixSD does have external database
libraries.

Jean Louis



Mutt documentation:

.1. Header Caching

   Mutt provides optional support for caching message headers for the
   following types of folders: IMAP, POP, Maildir and MH. Header caching
   greatly speeds up opening large folders because for remote folders,
   headers usually only need to be downloaded once. For Maildir and MH,
   reading the headers from a single file is much faster than looking at
   possibly thousands of single files (since Maildir and MH use one file
   per message.)

   Header caching can be enabled via the configure script and the
   --enable-hcache option. It's not turned on by default because external
   database libraries are required: one of tokyocabinet, qdbm, gdbm or bdb
   must be present.

On Wed, Mar 09, 2016 at 08:45:22PM -0500, Leo Famulari wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 01:44:47AM +0100, Jean Louis wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I wish to share how I got this working:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > So, I have done that with file:
> > 
> > ~/gnu/guix/packages/mutt.scm
> > 
> > which is attached.
> > 
> > And I have added, dependency "gdbm" for the option --enable-hcache to
> > have it working:
> > 
> > (inputs
> >  `(("cyrus-sasl" ,cyrus-sasl)
> > 	 ("gpgme" ,gpgme)
> > 	 ("gdbm" ,gdbm)
> > 
> > and
> > 
> >      `(#:configure-flags '("--enable-smtp"
> >                            "--enable-imap"
> >                            "--enable-pop"
> >                            "--enable-gpgme"
> >                            "--enable-hcache"
> 
> Cool, I'm glad you got that working.
> 
> Do you think this option (--enable-hcache) should be in our default mutt
> package? Would all mutt users benefit from it? Or is it something
> specific to your use case?

Re: guix edit mutt -- with new option, and dependency, how I got it working

[Leo Famulari]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 07:58:06AM +0100, Jean Louis wrote:
> Hello Leo,
> 
> I was using mutt on Debian, that option was always included:
> header_cache
> 
> - mutt accesses remote emails
> - this speeds up everything
> - GuixSD already includes gdbm and tokyocabinet
> - I have chosen gdbm, but testing could show if else is better
> 
> Imagine, when you have 2000-3000 emails, one need to wait long time, for
> mutt to read all the headers, seconds. This way it is 1 second. 
> 
> It should be included by default, as GuixSD does have external database
> libraries.

I'm really glad you mentioned this on our list! My "Archive" mail folder
has ~30000 messages, and I rarely opened it because of how long it would
take Mutt to load them all. With this option enabled, it loads almost
instantly, once the cache is created.

:)

I agree that we should build our Mutt with this option enabled.

If everyone agrees, the question is which database to use — we have gdbm
and bdb in our package tree (I think tokyocabinet is a WIP). I have no
idea which database is a better choice. What do people think?

Re: guix edit mutt -- with new option, and dependency, how I got it working

[Efraim Flashner]

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On Thu, 10 Mar 2016 15:45:51 -0500
Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 07:58:06AM +0100, Jean Louis wrote:
>  [...]  
> 
> I'm really glad you mentioned this on our list! My "Archive" mail folder
> has ~30000 messages, and I rarely opened it because of how long it would
> take Mutt to load them all. With this option enabled, it loads almost
> instantly, once the cache is created.
> 
> :)

sounds like it'd be good to enable

> 
> I agree that we should build our Mutt with this option enabled.
> 
> If everyone agrees, the question is which database to use — we have gdbm
> and bdb in our package tree (I think tokyocabinet is a WIP). I have no
> idea which database is a better choice. What do people think?

Assuming mutt, gdbm and bdb build on all architectures, comparing guix graph
of mutt, gdbm and bdb, and the graph of the two databases is identical. The
only other input I have is that debian uses tokyocabinet as a dependancy.

-- 
Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   אפרים פלשנר
GPG key = A28B F40C 3E55 1372 662D  14F7 41AA E7DC CA3D 8351
Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted

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Re: guix edit mutt -- with new option, and dependency, how I got it working

[Leo Famulari]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 11:06:49PM +0200, Efraim Flashner wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Mar 2016 15:45:51 -0500
> Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 07:58:06AM +0100, Jean Louis wrote:
> >  [...]  
> > 
> > I'm really glad you mentioned this on our list! My "Archive" mail folder
> > has ~30000 messages, and I rarely opened it because of how long it would
> > take Mutt to load them all. With this option enabled, it loads almost
> > instantly, once the cache is created.
> > 
> > :)
> 
> sounds like it'd be good to enable
> 
> > 
> > I agree that we should build our Mutt with this option enabled.
> > 
> > If everyone agrees, the question is which database to use — we have gdbm
> > and bdb in our package tree (I think tokyocabinet is a WIP). I have no
> > idea which database is a better choice. What do people think?
> 
> Assuming mutt, gdbm and bdb build on all architectures, comparing guix graph
> of mutt, gdbm and bdb, and the graph of the two databases is identical. The
> only other input I have is that debian uses tokyocabinet as a dependancy.

It looks like they both build on all architectures.

Gdbm is a little smaller and it's a GNU project, so I vote for gdbm, in
the absence of any knowledge of the two databases' technical merits.

> 
> -- 
> Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   אפרים פלשנר
> GPG key = A28B F40C 3E55 1372 662D  14F7 41AA E7DC CA3D 8351
> Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted

Re: guix edit mutt -- with new option, and dependency, how I got it working

[Ludovic Courtès]

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> skribis:

> On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 11:06:49PM +0200, Efraim Flashner wrote:
>> On Thu, 10 Mar 2016 15:45:51 -0500

[...]

>> > I agree that we should build our Mutt with this option enabled.
>> > 
>> > If everyone agrees, the question is which database to use — we have gdbm
>> > and bdb in our package tree (I think tokyocabinet is a WIP). I have no
>> > idea which database is a better choice. What do people think?
>> 
>> Assuming mutt, gdbm and bdb build on all architectures, comparing guix graph
>> of mutt, gdbm and bdb, and the graph of the two databases is identical. The
>> only other input I have is that debian uses tokyocabinet as a dependancy.
>
> It looks like they both build on all architectures.
>
> Gdbm is a little smaller and it's a GNU project, so I vote for gdbm, in
> the absence of any knowledge of the two databases' technical merits.

+1.

(I wonder how this relates to the subject of this message, though.  ;-))

Ludo’.