From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Pierre Neidhardt Subject: Re: Profiles/manifests-related command line interface enhancements Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2019 10:04:42 +0100 Message-ID: <87d0e4oy51.fsf@ambrevar.xyz> References: <87mudrxvs8.fsf@ambrevar.xyz> <87mudd59ho.fsf@gnu.org> <877e4glyc3.fsf@ambrevar.xyz> <87v9rxx8ri.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="=-=-="; micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature" Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:54570) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1iSdim-0000ZU-EO for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 07 Nov 2019 04:04:53 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1iSdii-00007G-Qy for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 07 Nov 2019 04:04:49 -0500 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: Konrad Hinsen , Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court?= =?utf-8?Q?=C3=A8s?= Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org --=-=-= Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Konrad Hinsen writes: > I agree. What's messy is how the concepts map to commands. How many Guix > users understand that profiles are persistent environments, or > environments ephemeral profiles? And how many understand what "guix > environment -r" does exactly, and how it should be used? It took me a > while to figure this out. Yup! Before I got down to write the article, I must confess I had been using Guix wrong for more than a year :p > What we have is two commands (package and environment) each designed for > one main usage pattern, plus options to get something else. But even > those options don't overlap completely in functionality. For example, > how do I make a profile with the dependencies of a package? > > The current discussion started with adding more commands for different > specific usage patterns. If we go that route the mess will become worse. Agreed. > Me too :-) It's "guix package" that is the worst offender in my > opinion. It does two distinct things: querying the package database and > managing profiles. And now that we have "guix search" for queries, I'd > like to see "guix package" go away, to be replaced by either "guix > profile" for profile management, with as much overlap as possible in > options with "guix environment", or by a single command that handles > environments and profiles in a unified way. I like this idea a lot! > They do, but not very well in my opinion. I think everything meant to be > shared, published, and maintained should be accessible by name in a > database. A channel, for example. > > Some ideas that could make this possible (and convenient): > > - Better support for adding/managing channels at the user account > level. Users shouldn't have to edit Guile code (unless they want to). This is a great idea. By the way, the same should be possible from the installer: =2D Specify which channels you want to use. =2D Specify which config.scm you want to use. Indeed, the config.scm might rely on channels. This way, the Guix installation process would boil down to the above 2 items, that is to say... 1 minute of the user time! Great, no? Cheers! =2D-=20 Pierre Neidhardt https://ambrevar.xyz/ --=-=-= Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQEzBAEBCAAdFiEEUPM+LlsMPZAEJKvom9z0l6S7zH8FAl3D3ioACgkQm9z0l6S7 zH/oygf/aRuxKUYoABfas+GEBfsoye8e/AKMBYFBPlL3yqachiMuua1/wga4+Jqv s1XMXTrZh3CL2B6Mik6zjQjL9TwnK4Qd5pK/hi9wwtiGcEW4XWHC1TZuh55TChpi VrGwv2meFoi4O4RrAihntHdyqw6MUVYEwiILsBuGnfpBLydIkdLZJ2/J7m3TLFdz +A6xv24CpQVN8xN3ZiQWtQiW2QZdgdu4CgMpg4Kh4ycrT5MV1UVq66GcAvu0hFqA MHpRJX85SIGdJAMTDMcBjQdp+o2XlYK+tcsUAko+gqoDWHxJ739g9V+TxPpYPuZU kv53bxqd2B0EK9XVYTJQZx9FDWUj7Q== =xIdg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-=-=--