How to modify GNOME

How to modify GNOME

[Brett Gilio]

Hi all,

Awhile back on the Guix-Devel list I proposed a question as to how to
/best/ modify the GNOME package that gets pulled into the
gnome-desktop-service. My reason for asking this is because a lot of
what comes with GNOME (evince, epiphany, etc.) I do not have a use for,
but I do not want to define an entirely new package as that would be
quite sloppy.

What I ended up doing back then was using SRFI and other modules to
remove the propogated-inputs, and setting the desktop-service to use
this modified package, but ultimately it never worked and nobody seemed
to be able to identify the issue.

I am opening this on the Guix Help list to see if anybody has any ideas
that I might be able to look into to try and implement this
successfully.

To be clear, this is the system configuration's level of GNOME we are
dealing with, not a local profile.

Best,
Brett

Re: How to modify GNOME

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi Brett,

> Awhile back on the Guix-Devel list I proposed a question as to how to
> /best/ modify the GNOME package that gets pulled into the
> gnome-desktop-service. My reason for asking this is because a lot of
> what comes with GNOME (evince, epiphany, etc.) I do not have a use for,
> but I do not want to define an entirely new package as that would be
> quite sloppy.

Why would that be sloppy?

It is common to create variant packages by inheriting:

    (define my/gnome
      (package (inherit gnome)
        (propagated-inputs
          `(("this" ,this)
            ("that" ,that)))))

Can you show us what you tried?

-- 
Ricardo

Re: How to modify GNOME

[brettg]

On 12.11.2018 07:27, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> Can you show us what you tried?

Hi Ricardo,

Here is my fully configuration:

;; This is an operating system configuration template
;; for a "desktop" setup with GNOME and Xfce where the
;; root partition is encrypted with LUKS.

(use-modules (gnu) (gnu system nss) (guix packages) (srfi srfi-1))
(use-service-modules desktop)
(use-package-modules certs gnome)

(define-public gnome-custom
   (package (inherit gnome)
	   (name "gnome-custom")
	   (propagated-inputs (alist-delete
			       "evince"
			       (package-propagated-inputs gnome)))))

(operating-system
   (host-name "oryxpro")
   (timezone "America/Chicago")
   (locale "en_US.utf8")

   ;; Use the UEFI variant of GRUB with the EFI System
   ;; Partition mounted on /boot/efi.
   (bootloader (bootloader-configuration
                 (bootloader grub-efi-bootloader)
                 (target "/boot/efi")))

   (file-systems (cons (file-system
                         (device (file-system-label "my-root"))
                         (mount-point "/")
                         (type "ext4"))
                       %base-file-systems))

   (users (cons (user-account
                 (name "brettg")
                 (comment "Brett Gilio")
                 (group "users")
                 (supplementary-groups '("wheel" "netdev"
                                         "audio" "video"))
                 (home-directory "/home/brettg"))
                %base-user-accounts))

   ;; This is where we specify system-wide packages.
   (packages (cons* nss-certs         ;for HTTPS access
                    gvfs              ;for user mounts
                    %base-packages))

   ;; Add GNOME and/or Xfce---we can choose at the log-in
   ;; screen with F1.  Use the "desktop" services, which
   ;; include the X11 log-in service, networking with
   ;; NetworkManager, and more.
   (services (cons* (service gnome-desktop-service-type
			    (gnome-desktop-configuration
			     (inherit config)
			     (gnome-package gnome-custom)))
                    %desktop-services))

   ;; Allow resolution of '.local' host names with mDNS.
   (name-service-switch %mdns-host-lookup-nss))