Helm System Packages: New support for Guix

Helm System Packages: New support for Guix

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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[[https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm-system-packages][Helm System Packages]] is an
interface to your system package managers.

Highlights:

- Helm "live" search of all packages.
- Install / Uninstall a bunch of packages at once.
- Explore dependencies recursively from the same Helm buffer.
- Navigate the package files with Helm.
- TRAMP support (it should work over the network).

The overlap with guix.el is obvious, but I believe it makes the user
experience a little smoother when it comes to common tasks.

Besides Guix, it also supports portage, dpkg, pacman, xbps.  macOS brew
support is on its way.

It is possible to manage packages of remote systems via any protocol
supported by TRAMP!  Simply call ~helm-system-packages~ from a remote
buffer (a file, a shell, Dired...)  and you'll get the list of packages
of the remote system.

Because Helm System Packages caches as much as it can on your local system, the
interface will remain (mostly) snappy even over slow connections.

Don't hesitate to report any issues you might run into and drop a comment if
you'd like to see some extra functionalities implemented.

--
Pierre Neidhardt

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Re: Helm System Packages: New support for Guix

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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One of the biggest missing features is _reverse dependency_ browsing:
does anyone know if it's possible to display them with guix?

--
Pierre Neidhardt

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Re: Helm System Packages: New support for Guix

[Ludovic Courtès]

Pierre Neidhardt <ambrevar@gmail.com> skribis:

> One of the biggest missing features is _reverse dependency_ browsing:
> does anyone know if it's possible to display them with guix?

‘guix refresh --list-dependents’ gives an overview of that.  I suppose
you could write code along the same lines to do what you want.

Ludo’.

Re: Helm System Packages: New support for Guix

[Ludovic Courtès]

Pierre Neidhardt <ambrevar@gmail.com> skribis:

> [[https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm-system-packages][Helm System Packages]] is an
> interface to your system package managers.
>
> Highlights:
>
> - Helm "live" search of all packages.
> - Install / Uninstall a bunch of packages at once.
> - Explore dependencies recursively from the same Helm buffer.
> - Navigate the package files with Helm.
> - TRAMP support (it should work over the network).

Interesting!

Does it support the notion of non-root installs, per-user profiles, and
arbitrary profiles for Guix?

I’m asking because that’s a significant difference between Guix and the
other supported package managers.  PackageKit, for instance, provides a
package management abstraction that’s biased towards “traditional”
package managers and is inadequate for Guix.

> The overlap with guix.el is obvious, but I believe it makes the user
> experience a little smoother when it comes to common tasks.

You chose to interface with the command line.  I suppose this creates
less friction for an initial install compared to using Geiser and the
Scheme APIs of Guix, but that’s probably at the expense of expressive
power and control (I really like the rich interface that guix.el is able
to provide with this approach).

Anyway, cool stuff!  Now you need to make a package for it.  :-)

Ludo’.

Re: Helm System Packages: New support for Guix

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> ‘guix refresh --list-dependents’ gives an overview of that.  I suppose
> you could write code along the same lines to do what you want.

Thanks!  Note that it is `guix refresh --list-dependent` (no 's').

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt

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Re: Helm System Packages: New support for Guix

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> Does it support the notion of non-root installs, per-user profiles, and
> arbitrary profiles for Guix?
>
> I’m asking because that’s a significant difference between Guix and the
> other supported package managers.  PackageKit, for instance, provides a
> package management abstraction that’s biased towards “traditional”
> package managers and is inadequate for Guix.

For now it works on the user default profile (non-root install).

That said, the abstraction is pretty minimal, so it's totally possible
to do anything we want on the Guix side.

Could you hint at some use cases and examples around arbitrary profiles?
I only use my default profile at the moment, so I'm not sure what to do there.

> You chose to interface with the command line.  I suppose this creates
> less friction for an initial install compared to using Geiser and the
> Scheme APIs of Guix, but that’s probably at the expense of expressive
> power and control (I really like the rich interface that guix.el is able
> to provide with this approach).

Absolutely.  I chose this approach so I could roll out a first prototype
in a few hours.  I'm not very familiar with the Guix API yet, but
eventually I'm thinking of re-using guix.el when that would be more
convenient.

Contributions are very welcome!

> Anyway, cool stuff!  Now you need to make a package for it.  :-)

Coming soon!

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt

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