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* bug#47458: Terrible UX upgrading Emacs in Guix
@ 2021-03-29  2:02 Mark H Weaver
  2021-03-29  8:07 ` Leo Prikler
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 38+ messages in thread
From: Mark H Weaver @ 2021-03-29  2:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 47458

I just updated my Guix system, which included the Emacs update from 27.1
to 27.2.  After "guix package -m mhw-manifest.scm" finished running
(which takes a long time for me, since I don't use substitutes), and
before I even noticed that it had finished, my existing Emacs session
started misbehaving badly.

It failed to even open a plain text file in fundamental mode (a .drv
file) with an inscrutible error about 'arrayp'.  I tried to enable the
debugger with M-x toggle-debug-on-error, but then I started getting
errors about 'debug' not found.  (I neglected to record the exact
messages).

I tried running "emacs -Q", and the same errors happened there too.  I
tried running "emacs -Q" from my root shell on a Linux text terminal,
and the same errors happened there.

I resorted to using 'vi' (which thankfully I had, and still remember how
to use for basic editing) to revert the emacs update on my private
branch and to rebuild my user profiles.

Eventually, I realized what the problem was:

(1) My existing emacs session started failing because
    ~/.guix-profile/share/emacs/27.1 had disappeared out from under it.

(2) My newly launched emacs sessions were failing because my
    EMACSLOADPATH variable was still set to its old value, pointing at
    /home/mhw/.guix-profile/share/emacs/27.1/lisp, which no longer
    existed.

I'm not sure why I've never run into this problem before.  I'm also not
sure what can be done to make this better, but if anyone has ideas, that
would be good.  If a 7+ year Guix veteran developer gets bitten badly by
this, I doubt that less experienced users will be impressed.

Any ideas?

       Mark




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 38+ messages in thread
* bug#45316: [PATCH]: Re-introduce Emacs packages specific installation prefix.
@ 2020-12-18 22:00 Maxim Cournoyer
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 38+ messages in thread
From: Maxim Cournoyer @ 2020-12-18 22:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 45316

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2631 bytes --]

Hello Guix!

tl;dr: The Emacs build system and site-start.el loader are modified so
that Emacs packages are installed in their own distinct installation
directory.

The Emacs packages built with the Emacs built system used to be
installed in a sub-directory under the share/emacs/guix.d/ directory,
but this was changed in commit 65a7dd2950ca13a8b942b2836260a2192351b271
shortly after having accommodated the site-start.el machinery to enable
loading packages from any profile (via the EMACSLOADPATH search path
specification).

While this change allowed to expose simply and directly the packages
found in EMACSLOADPATH, it does introduce the risk of file name
collisions when multiple Emacs packages are joined in the same profile,
especially with Emacs packages increasing in complexity (e.g., using
more than a single .el file!) and expecting to have both their sources
and resources extracted under their own nested directory rather than as
a flat collection (ELPA, MELPA).

One recent example I stumbled on was attempting to use the
emacs-yasnippet-snippets package along with emacs-elpy; both wanted to
install a 'snippets' directory to share/emacs/site-lisp/snippets,
collided and resulted in problems that prove difficult to understand.

This is what motivated this patch series, where the site-start.el
auxiliary code used for package discovery is extended to support
packages installed in their own directory under a 'share/emacs/guix'
installation prefix, via Emacs' own package library!

The emacs-build-system is updated for this new installation prefix, as
well as existing packages and documentation.  Parting with a directly
usable EMACSLOADPATH means that site-start.el *must* run for packages to
appear in the load-path; that means for running a test suite, the -Q or
--quick Emacs options cannot be used, since it implies --no-site-file.

Benefits of using this approach:

+ Avoid inter-package file name collisions.

+ Better integration with user installed packages via M-x
package-install.  The Guix-installed packages are listed in M-x
package-list as 'external'.

Cons include:

- Slightly more complex loader (although much of it is offloaded to
  package.el), thus slightly slower (see the comparison below).

- Requires to ensure every package's test suite doesn't make use of -Q.

In my opinion the benefits outweighs the cons by a comfortable margin,
especially with the boring work of adapting the package collection
already done.

To test the performance of the new approach, the following manifest file
was used to test the rebuild of the ~900 Emacs packages making use of
the Emacs build system:


[-- Attachment #2: emacs-packages-manifest.scm --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Size: 806 bytes --]

(use-modules (gnu packages)
             (guix build-system)
             (guix packages)
             (srfi srfi-1))

(define %broken-emacs-packages
  (map specification->package
       '("emacs-picpocket"              ;tests fail
         "emacs-twittering-mode"        ;build fails

         ;; Broken only on current master, without new changes.
         "emacs-md4rd"
         "emacs-el-patch"
         "emacs-flymake-shellcheck"
         )))

(define %emacs-packages
  (fold-packages (lambda (package lst)
                   (if (eq? (build-system-name (package-build-system package))
                            'emacs)
                       (cons package lst)
                       lst))
                 '()))

(packages->manifest
 (lset-difference eqv? %emacs-packages %broken-emacs-packages))

[-- Attachment #3: Type: text/plain, Size: 2772 bytes --]


A simple benchmark testing the performance of the activation of the
hundreds of Emacs packages was then run using:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ ./pre-inst-env guix environment --pure -m emacs-packages-manifest.scm \
                                  --ad-hoc emacs
[env]$ /run/setuid-programs/sudo /bin/sh -c 'echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches'
[env]$ emacs --batch --no-site-file \
    --eval="(progn (require 'guix-emacs) \
                   (require 'benchmark) \
                   (message \"(total gc-count gc-time) = %s\" \
                            (benchmark-run 1 (guix-emacs-autoload-packages))))"
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

On the master branch:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
[...]
Loading /gnu/store/qajc70c7nqycs1301ram8s3x7k9ibg5f-profile/share/emacs/site-lisp/zotxt-autoloads...
Loading /gnu/store/qajc70c7nqycs1301ram8s3x7k9ibg5f-profile/share/emacs/site-lisp/zoutline-autoloads...
Loading /gnu/store/qajc70c7nqycs1301ram8s3x7k9ibg5f-profile/share/emacs/site-lisp/ztree-autoloads...
(total gc-count gc-time) = (25.242400751 13 0.189669369)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Or about 0.65 s on a warm cache.

On a branch with these changes:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Error loading autoloads: (file-missing Cannot open load file No such file or directory kotl/kotl-autoloads)
Error loading autoloads: (file-missing Cannot open load file No such file or directory helm-easymenu)
Error loading autoloads: (file-missing Cannot open load file No such file or directory /gnu/store/ryh0rasi9frm98dkd3kbck6hya6hn2qr-profile/share/emacs/site-lisp/guix/flycheck-cpplint-0.1-1.1d8a090/flycheck-cpplint-autoloads)
Error loading autoloads: (file-missing Cannot open load file No such file or directory /gnu/store/ryh0rasi9frm98dkd3kbck6hya6hn2qr-profile/share/emacs/site-lisp/guix/evil-anzu-0.03/evil-anzu-autoloads)
Error loading autoloads: (file-missing Cannot open load file No such file or directory /gnu/store/ryh0rasi9frm98dkd3kbck6hya6hn2qr-profile/share/emacs/site-lisp/guix/erc-image-0-3.82fb387/erc-image-autoloads)
ad-handle-definition: `ido-completing-read' got redefined
Error loading autoloads: (file-missing Cannot open load file No such file or directory tex-site)
(total gc-count gc-time) = (26.175704339 47 0.783184412)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Or about 3 seconds on a warm cache.

There a 6 errors that would need to be looked into, but I these look
like actual packaging problems rather than new issues.  The previously
used way to load the autoloads, '(load f 'noerror)' would have masked
them.

Thanks,

Maxim

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 38+ messages in thread
* [bug#43627] [PATCH core-updates]: Add a 'append-separator?' field to the <search-path-specification> record.
@ 2020-09-26  6:11 Maxim Cournoyer
  2020-09-26  6:14 ` [bug#43627] [PATCH core-updates 1/3] guix: Add an append-separator? " Maxim Cournoyer
                   ` (3 more replies)
  0 siblings, 4 replies; 38+ messages in thread
From: Maxim Cournoyer @ 2020-09-26  6:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 43627

Hello Guix!

These three commits extend our search-path-specification record with a
new field, that can be used to produce a trailing separator, which can
be useful at least with Emacs (I can think of at least another place
where it could be used: the INFOPATH variable).

It was motivated to allow defining the Emacs search path in a more
robust way.

Thanks!

Maxim




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 38+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2021-05-20 14:48 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 38+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2021-03-29  2:02 bug#47458: Terrible UX upgrading Emacs in Guix Mark H Weaver
2021-03-29  8:07 ` Leo Prikler
2021-03-29  8:24   ` Maxime Devos
2021-03-29  8:43     ` Leo Prikler
2021-03-29 15:55 ` [bug#45359] " Ludovic Courtès
2021-03-29 15:55 ` Ludovic Courtès
2021-03-29 18:25   ` bug#45359: " Maxim Cournoyer
2020-12-22  3:28     ` [bug#45359] [PATCH]: Re-introduce Emacs packages specific installation prefix Maxim Cournoyer
2020-12-22  8:51       ` bug#45316: " Leo Prikler
2020-12-22 18:09         ` Maxim Cournoyer
2020-12-22 19:10           ` Leo Prikler
2020-12-26  5:01             ` Maxim Cournoyer
2020-12-26 10:56               ` Leo Prikler
2020-12-27  4:44                 ` Maxim Cournoyer
2020-12-27  8:46                   ` Leo Prikler
     [not found]       ` <handler.45359.D45359.161704236132600.notifdone@debbugs.gnu.org>
2021-03-29 18:45         ` [bug#45359] closed (Re: bug#47458: Terrible UX upgrading Emacs in Guix) Maxim Cournoyer
2021-03-29 18:48         ` bug#45359: [PATCH]: Re-introduce Emacs packages specific installation prefix Maxim Cournoyer
2021-03-30  8:04     ` [bug#45359] bug#47458: Terrible UX upgrading Emacs in Guix Ludovic Courtès
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2020-12-18 22:00 bug#45316: [PATCH]: Re-introduce Emacs packages specific installation prefix Maxim Cournoyer
2020-09-26  6:11 [bug#43627] [PATCH core-updates]: Add a 'append-separator?' field to the <search-path-specification> record Maxim Cournoyer
2020-09-26  6:14 ` [bug#43627] [PATCH core-updates 1/3] guix: Add an append-separator? " Maxim Cournoyer
2020-09-26  6:14   ` [bug#43627] [PATCH core-updates 2/3] gnu: emacs: Use the new append-separator? option to define its search path Maxim Cournoyer
2020-09-26  6:14   ` [bug#43627] [PATCH core-updates 3/3] Revert "emacs-build-system: Ensure the core libraries appear last in the load path." Maxim Cournoyer
2020-09-27 19:01 ` [bug#43627] [PATCH core-updates]: Add a 'append-separator?' field to the <search-path-specification> record Ludovic Courtès
2020-10-03 21:22   ` Maxim Cournoyer
2020-11-02 13:59     ` Ludovic Courtès
2020-11-08  5:49       ` Maxim Cournoyer
2021-03-30 15:51 ` [bug#43627] [PATCH core-updates v2 1/2] guix: Add an append-separator? " Maxim Cournoyer
2021-03-30 15:51   ` [bug#43627] [PATCH core-updates v2 2/2] gnu: emacs: Use the new append-separator? option to define its search path Maxim Cournoyer
2021-04-10 20:42   ` [bug#43627] [PATCH core-updates v2 1/2] guix: Add an append-separator? field to the <search-path-specification> record Ludovic Courtès
2021-05-20 14:24     ` bug#43627: " Maxim Cournoyer
2021-03-30 18:41 ` [bug#43627] [PATCH] gnu: emacs: Wrap EMACSLOADPATH Leo Prikler
2021-04-04  4:35   ` bug#47458: Terrible UX upgrading Emacs in Guix Maxim Cournoyer
2021-04-04  7:49     ` Leo Prikler
2021-04-06 12:09       ` Maxim Cournoyer
2021-04-06 15:49         ` Leo Prikler
2021-04-07 19:46           ` Maxim Cournoyer
2021-05-20 13:24             ` Maxim Cournoyer

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