Hello Guix!

I had it on my to-do list and Andy said he’d like to have something like
that to publish Guile 2.2 binaries: the ‘guix pack’ command below is a
generalization of the code that builds the Guix binary tarball¹.  It
creates a bundle of the closure of the given packages, with a profile
containing all the packages.

Examples:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ ./pre-inst-env guix pack guile-next
/gnu/store/c2brwnrx0066lvf1d9hg82lvb1wkmd78-tarball.tar.lz
$ ./pre-inst-env guix pack guile-next guix
/gnu/store/kc6bxqwrf9z2vvxwndhw8s39s39h5mz6-tarball.tar.lz
$ tar tvf /gnu/store/kc6bxqwrf9z2vvxwndhw8s39s39h5mz6-tarball.tar.lz|grep /bin/gui[lx]
-r-xr-xr-x root/root      2974 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/060piiiz4nmb51jc3wk01bgikajrnfjd-guile-2.0.13/bin/guild
-r-xr-xr-x root/root     13472 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/060piiiz4nmb51jc3wk01bgikajrnfjd-guile-2.0.13/bin/guile
-r-xr-xr-x root/root      7008 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/060piiiz4nmb51jc3wk01bgikajrnfjd-guile-2.0.13/bin/guile-config
-r-xr-xr-x root/root      3050 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/060piiiz4nmb51jc3wk01bgikajrnfjd-guile-2.0.13/bin/guile-snarf
lrwxrwxrwx root/root         0 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/060piiiz4nmb51jc3wk01bgikajrnfjd-guile-2.0.13/bin/guile-tools -> guild
-r-xr-xr-x root/root      2978 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/62hqgi4cac0f70v1ycsvv985fl3l1hzr-guile-next-2.1.7/bin/guild
-r-xr-xr-x root/root     12784 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/62hqgi4cac0f70v1ycsvv985fl3l1hzr-guile-next-2.1.7/bin/guile
-r-xr-xr-x root/root      7022 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/62hqgi4cac0f70v1ycsvv985fl3l1hzr-guile-next-2.1.7/bin/guile-config
-r-xr-xr-x root/root      3072 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/62hqgi4cac0f70v1ycsvv985fl3l1hzr-guile-next-2.1.7/bin/guile-snarf
lrwxrwxrwx root/root         0 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/62hqgi4cac0f70v1ycsvv985fl3l1hzr-guile-next-2.1.7/bin/guile-tools -> guild
-r-xr-xr-x root/root       744 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/6xlybn33znrp4nyvy39wbrwjrl8l9qnd-guix-0.12.0-5.1162/bin/guix
-r-xr-xr-x root/root    933120 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/6xlybn33znrp4nyvy39wbrwjrl8l9qnd-guix-0.12.0-5.1162/bin/guix-daemon
lrwxrwxrwx root/root         0 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/ynafk7v924xil993dqbx4mxxnm9ifsi6-profile/bin/guild -> /gnu/store/62hqgi4cac0f70v1ycsvv985fl3l1hzr-guile-next-2.1.7/bin/guild
lrwxrwxrwx root/root         0 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/ynafk7v924xil993dqbx4mxxnm9ifsi6-profile/bin/guile -> /gnu/store/62hqgi4cac0f70v1ycsvv985fl3l1hzr-guile-next-2.1.7/bin/guile
lrwxrwxrwx root/root         0 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/ynafk7v924xil993dqbx4mxxnm9ifsi6-profile/bin/guile-config -> /gnu/store/62hqgi4cac0f70v1ycsvv985fl3l1hzr-guile-next-2.1.7/bin/guile-config
lrwxrwxrwx root/root         0 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/ynafk7v924xil993dqbx4mxxnm9ifsi6-profile/bin/guile-snarf -> /gnu/store/62hqgi4cac0f70v1ycsvv985fl3l1hzr-guile-next-2.1.7/bin/guile-snarf
lrwxrwxrwx root/root         0 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/ynafk7v924xil993dqbx4mxxnm9ifsi6-profile/bin/guile-tools -> /gnu/store/62hqgi4cac0f70v1ycsvv985fl3l1hzr-guile-next-2.1.7/bin/guile-tools
lrwxrwxrwx root/root         0 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/ynafk7v924xil993dqbx4mxxnm9ifsi6-profile/bin/guix -> /gnu/store/6xlybn33znrp4nyvy39wbrwjrl8l9qnd-guix-0.12.0-5.1162/bin/guix
lrwxrwxrwx root/root         0 1970-01-01 01:00 ./gnu/store/ynafk7v924xil993dqbx4mxxnm9ifsi6-profile/bin/guix-daemon -> /gnu/store/6xlybn33znrp4nyvy39wbrwjrl8l9qnd-guix-0.12.0-5.1162/bin/guix-daemon
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Andy, does this correspond to what you have in mind?

I’d like to move support for Docker (currently in ‘guix archive’) to
this new command because I think it’s more appropriate: ‘guix archive’
is supposed to be rather low-level so it would not create a profile, for
instance.

Ricardo, WDYT?

If there are no objections, I’d like to commit it soonish.

Thanks!

Ludo’.

¹ https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/system/install.scm#n52