On Sat, 3 Nov 2018 21:46:02 -0600
Brian Woodcox <bw@inskydata.com> wrote:

> Hi Björn,
> 
> You nailed it.
> 
> Of course, I am not too certain how to use the guix git-checkout
> command.
> 
> Do you or anyone else have an example of how you would build this
> after downloading it?
> 
>   I’ve done a bit of search, but have not come up with much.
> 
> Thanks
> 

Hi Brian,

its described in section "7 Contributing" of the manual:

https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/en/guix.html#Contributing

Please refer to the manual for full details, I will show here in short
out of my head, errors/typos might be included:

git clone https://...guix.gt

cd git

# Now you need to enter an enviromnent where guix' build tools are
# available. You could install everything yourself in a foreign distro
# or via guix package -i ..., but Guix knows it best, so just do a:

guix environment guix

# Next you need to bootstrap and build:

./bootstrap
./configure --localstatedir=/var
make

# Now search source file:
guix package -s "^nss$"
name: nss
version: 3.39
outputs: out bin
systems: x86_64-linux i686-linux armhf-linux aarch64-linux mips64el-linux
dependencies: nspr@4.20 perl@5.26.1 sqlite@3.23.0 zlib@1.2.11
location: gnu/packages/gnuzilla.scm:364:2
[..]

# edit it:

emacs gnu/packages/gnuzilla.scm

#[could also call "guix edit nss" directly]

    (arguments
     `(#:parallel-build? #f ; not supported
;; Add this line to arguments:
       #:tests? #f
       #:make-flags
;; Remove this:  (replace 'check ...)

Now run guix from source:

./pre-inst-env guix build nss

Then do whatever you want to from there:

./pre-inst-env guix install ...
./pre-inst-env guix system ...

Note: It is not enough to just build/install nss from here and then go
on with the "normal" guix: Because you changed nss, all dependencies
need to be built too.

And that is basically the world:

./pre-inst-env guix refresh -l nss

Building the following 3119 packages would ensure 8553 dependent packages are rebuilt:

So, not sure if that helps you here...

Björn