Re: Rethinking guix pull [was Re: Heads-up: transition to Guile 2.2]

[myglc2 <myglc2@gmail.com>]

On 05/17/2017 at 14:45 Ludovic Courtès writes:

> Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> skribis:
>
>> I think that a first step towards improving the experience with “guix
>> pull” is to build Guix continuously on Hydra and tell “guix pull” to
>> download that.  Users would no longer have to wait for compilation on
>> their local machines, removing a big incentive to go with a git
>> checkout.  Maybe we should do this first to stop the worst problems,
>> buying us a bit more time to implement channels.
>
> That’s probably what we’ll do next.  But remember that users will still
> have to compute the derivation for that Guix, which in turn should allow
> them to get the corresponding substitute, and computing that derivation
> is currently relatively costly since you need to compile or interpret a
> subset of the Guix code.
>
> Ludo’.

This hints at the weirdly "re-entrant nature" of guix. And I mean that
in the most friendly way possible ;-)

I just wish I understood this aspect of guix better. Do we have a
diagram? Could we produce one? I sure would like to see it, or even help
make it.  Any suggestions along this line would be welcome.