Help wanted: Nightly builds for Guix

Help wanted: Nightly builds for Guix

[Carl Dong]

Hi all,

I would like to help make nightly builds available for Guix. This was something
that was discussed briefly at Guix Days, and the reception was positive.

I'm wondering where best to start with this. Perhaps it'd be informative to know
how regular releases are done and see what's missing there (and perhaps what
needs automation)?

Thanks for your help in advance!

Cheers,
Carl Dong

Re: Help wanted: Nightly builds for Guix

[Vincent Legoll]

Hello,

On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 6:29 PM Carl Dong <contact@carldong.me> wrote:
> I would like to help make nightly builds available for Guix. This was something
> that was discussed briefly at Guix Days, and the reception was positive.

Looks like a good idea

> I'm wondering where best to start with this.

> Perhaps it'd be informative to know how regular releases are done

Have a look at the "age" column here:
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/refs/tags

I think it's pretty accurate wrt the real release dates, or am I wrong
about that ?

-- 
Vincent Legoll

Re: Help wanted: Nightly builds for Guix

[Leo Famulari]

On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 05:29:37PM +0000, Carl Dong wrote:
> I'm wondering where best to start with this. Perhaps it'd be informative to know
> how regular releases are done and see what's missing there (and perhaps what
> needs automation)?

Check the release target in our Makefile. I remember some detailed
descriptions of the entire process from Ludovic in the past, but I can't
remember where to find those messages.

Re: Help wanted: Nightly builds for Guix

[Mathieu Othacehe]

Hello Carl,

> I would like to help make nightly builds available for Guix. This was something
> that was discussed briefly at Guix Days, and the reception was positive.

Do you mean nightly builds of Guix itself? If yes, I guess one good
starting point would be what we already build in our CI.

We use Cuirass to build all packages on top of master, core-updates and
staging branches each time those branches are modified. We also do build
Guix "itself" so that you get substitutes when running "guix pull".

You can find a part of our Cuirass CI configuration here[1].

Adding a Cuirass job, doing the equivalent of "make release" nightly
could be possible this way, if that's what you intend to do.

Thanks,

Mathieu

[1]: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/maintenance.git/tree/hydra/modules/sysadmin/services.scm

Re: Help wanted: Nightly builds for Guix

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> skribis:

> On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 05:29:37PM +0000, Carl Dong wrote:
>> I'm wondering where best to start with this. Perhaps it'd be informative to know
>> how regular releases are done and see what's missing there (and perhaps what
>> needs automation)?
>
> Check the release target in our Makefile. I remember some detailed
> descriptions of the entire process from Ludovic in the past, but I can't
> remember where to find those messages.

The release process is documented at:

  https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/maintenance.git/tree/doc/release.org

As for nightly builds: CI currently builds things like:

  https://ci.guix.gnu.org/search?query=guix-binary  ;binary tarball
  https://ci.guix.gnu.org/search?query=disk-image   ;ISO9660 image

It’s inconvenient to grab, though, for someone who doesn’t already have
Guix.  Perhaps we should address that somehow?

Thanks,
Ludo’.