Re: Bringing substitutes from the Guix Build Coordinator to users

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hi!

Christopher Baines <mail@cbaines.net> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

[...]

>> A QA entry point like you proposed in the thread you mentioned¹ could
>> certainly help.  A reproducibility entry point would be nice too.  A
>> package browser for guix.gnu.org like the one Danjela worked on would be
>> great too, possibly with version browsing facilities.  And Guix Weekly
>> News!  And the security tracker!  :-)
>>
>> ¹ https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2021-02/msg00096.html
>>
>> It seems to me that all that hard work is already done and what I
>> describe above are rather low-hanging fruits.
>>
>> Taking Conway’s law into account, we may find it easier to recruit if as
>> much as possible takes place here, things get deployed behind
>> *.guix.gnu.org, and relevant bits are made part of Guix proper.  And
>> also, we must regularly advertise progress; one blog post in all of the
>> Guix Data Service’s lifetime is not enough.  :-)
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
> This doesn't really relate to the subject of substitutes.

Indeed, I slid off-topic, but it’s all there in the big picture.  :-)

> Some of the things you mention do relate to work I'm trying to progress
> though. I'm still working on automated patch (plus branch) testing, and
> I think having a simple overview of patch+branch states is hopefully
> something that I'll get to at some point.
>
> On the subject of the patch testing stuff, that isn't under
> .guix.gnu.org and I haven't written a blog post yet. I can't see Cuirass
> starting to test patches, but then I wouldn't have predicted it would be
> managing builds across multiple machines. Maybe there are some risks
> with the patch testing work that I haven't done enough/the right stuff
> to mitigate.
>
> I've also got too many things in progress at the moment, with the
> combination of work on substitutes (I hope to implement things set out
> in [1] some point soon), Outreachy, and the security related work that
> I'm trying to start, I need to "finish" some things before starting new
> ones or going back to unfinished things.
>
> 1: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2021-02/msg00104.html

Yeah, I do think polishing, deploying, and advertising some of these
things that are already 80% ready would be a great booster for all of
us.  To help recruit people, we can also deploy at guix.gnu.org things
that are not complete yet (the package browser, Guix Weekly News, the QA
entry point, etc.); it’s always easier once the thing is palatable.

HTH!

Ludo’.