Re: Registering GC roots

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Alex Vong <alexvong1995@gmail.com> skribis:

> On 16/10/2015, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:
>> Alex Vong <alexvong1995@gmail.com> skribis:
>>
>>> Talking about interactive CLIs, in general I am not a fan of it too,
>>> especially after you get used to the program. That's why I am using
>>> plain apt-get instead of aptitude which uses ncurses. However, I will
>>> say it is sometimes useful. For example, in git clean, there is an
>>> `-i' switch, which can help if you don't want to mess with your
>>> .gitignore file. So perhaps making something GC roots is like putting
>>> it in .gitignore in git, but we should still provide a way for
>>> interacting GC-ing.
>>
>> Currently there are two documented ways to add GC roots from the command
>> line: creating a profile with ‘guix package’, and using the -r option of
>> ‘guix build.’
>>
>> What David suggests is to add a similar -r option to ‘guix environment’,
>> which sounds good to me.
>>
> I see. So currently there is no way to make an environment GC root and
> David is proposing using -r to achieve it. Am I right?

Exactly.

>> The GC process itself will not be interactive.  Who would want to hit
>> ‘y’ or ‘n’ for each one of the thousands of files considered?  :-)
>>
> Indeed, option 3 [3. ask for every directories (like interactive
> `rm')] looks silly. What is your opinions on a big yes/no? Perhaps it
> is useful for beginners who may not know the "power" of GC?

Like having ‘guix gc’ ask “Are you sure you want to collect garbage?”,
with the option to bypass it with, say, ‘guix gc -f’?

With my biased old-timer’s viewpoint ;-), I would tend to believe that
the documentation is clear about what it means to collect garbage, and
that the user knows what they’re doing when they press Enter.

What do others think?

Ludo’.