From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Christopher Allan Webber Subject: Re: User-Friendlyness of Guix and non-scaryness, printing messages Date: Tue, 30 May 2017 09:32:56 -0500 Message-ID: <877f0ywh2f.fsf@dustycloud.org> References: <87bbe3e5.AEAAKL2r-KIAAAAAAAAAAAOtUOAAAAACwQwAAAAAAAW9WABZGcQo@mailjet.com> <87y3tw4kw3.fsf@gnu.org> <87r2zfx0xt.fsf@gnu.org> <427678e8.AEUAKjfDcSgAAAAAAAAAAAPB0agAAAACwQwAAAAAAAW9WABZKceD@mailjet.com> <20170528204437.6dfd35c4@scratchpost.org> <20170528192058.GF15883@jasmine> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:54941) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dFiCj-0007eO-SS for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 30 May 2017 10:33:02 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dFiCi-0000pa-UJ for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 30 May 2017 10:33:01 -0400 Received: from dustycloud.org ([2600:3c02::f03c:91ff:feae:cb51]:58424) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dFiCi-0000pS-Os for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 30 May 2017 10:33:00 -0400 In-reply-to: List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Arun Isaac Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Arun Isaac writes: >> But I think 'guix package' can be made a lot more user-friendly by not >> showing the build output (by default). The summary of what will be >> installed, and some progress indicator or at least something moving to >> show the user it's doing something, and eventually the success or >> failure message is enough. > > Is it possible to have `guix package' NOT build from source? I really > hate it when big packages like icecat, epiphany, or libreoffice start > building on my machine. It takes about a day for each one of these > packages to build on my machine, and they generally swap so much into > HDD, that I can hardly do anything else when building. Because of this > inconvenience, I keep postponing upgrading my packages. > > Also, sometimes having to "--fallback" to building source is such a > pain. I think the end user needs a Debian-like experience (or like other > conventional non-source distros) where they can ALWAYS download the > latest packages from the repos. There's a bug I opened about adding an --only-substitutes option: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=26608 Ludo seems to support it, so I guess really someone just needs to implement it. It would result in a lot less churn for a lot of us :)