From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Thompson Subject: Re: Improving the usability of 'guix environment' Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 12:53:50 -0500 Message-ID: <87a90lhcup.fsf@fsf.org> References: <87fvadhg1d.fsf@fsf.org> <87lhk51xxa.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:57838) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1YLF0X-0007Vl-CF for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 10 Feb 2015 12:53:58 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1YLF0S-0008Tp-GY for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 10 Feb 2015 12:53:57 -0500 In-Reply-To: <87lhk51xxa.fsf@gnu.org> 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-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?= Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Ludovic Court=C3=A8s writes: > David Thompson skribis: > >> But all of that boilerplate is unnecessary since it's not possible to >> actually build the package successfully without a proper hash of the >> source AFAICT. Really, I would rather just use a simple list of >> packages: >> >> (list autoconf automake guile-2.0 guile-json libgcrypt) > > What about adding a case for the handling of =E2=80=98-l=E2=80=99 such th= at, if the file > evaluates to a list of packages, it does what you suggest? I'm hesitant to do that, because I would also like for a list of packages to be usable for building the environment as it's done currently. Only allowing a single package in a file is a limitation right now. >> I propose adding a new flag that indicates whether we want the packages >> themselves or their inputs in the environment. If we assume that the >> default behavior is to include the packages themselves, a --inputs flag >> could indicate to use the package(s) inputs instead: >> >> guix environment --inputs emacs > > That makes sense. > > In terms of UI, what about rather something keeping an interface close > to that of =E2=80=98guix package=E2=80=99: > > guix environment -i guile guile-sdl > # semantically equivalent to =E2=80=98guix package -i guile guile-sdl= =E2=80=99 So without the -i switch, it would behave as it does now? Okay, but I guess I would prefer to optimize for the common case, which in my case would be having -i on by default. > Now that I think of it, we could even move -E to =E2=80=98guix package=E2= =80=99 itself: > that would make it easy to create a scratch environment based on an > existing profile. I'm a bit confused about that. Are you suggesting we merge 'guix environment' into 'guix package'? --=20 David Thompson Web Developer - Free Software Foundation - http://fsf.org GPG Key: 0FF1D807 Support the FSF: https://fsf.org/donate