User defined custom packages.

User defined custom packages.

[Yagnesh Raghava Yakkala]

Hello Guix,

Is there place where I can put custom defined package definitions?. This is
similar to ".emacs". I use (and contribute) el-get¹ for emacs which allows put
package definitions (recipes what they are called) in .emacs. Those definition
can be new packages or overwrite of original definitions in the guix repo as
per user liking.

This has additional benefit of not touching the guix source at all when
testing a package definition.

To be clear, if guix has rc file per user basis, which it invocates each time
any of guix command is run.

Thanks,

¹  https://github.com/dimitri/el-get
-- 
ఎందరో మహానుభావులు అందరికి వందనములు.
YYR

Re: User defined custom packages.

[Ludovic Courtès]

Yagnesh Raghava Yakkala <hi@yagnesh.org> skribis:

> Is there place where I can put custom defined package definitions?. This is
> similar to ".emacs". I use (and contribute) el-get¹ for emacs which allows put
> package definitions (recipes what they are called) in .emacs. Those definition
> can be new packages or overwrite of original definitions in the guix repo as
> per user liking.
>
> This has additional benefit of not touching the guix source at all when
> testing a package definition.
>
> To be clear, if guix has rc file per user basis, which it invocates each time
> any of guix command is run.

There’s no such rc file, but it would probably be a good idea.

As for custom package definitions, yes it’s possible to have them, with
the caveat that they cannot be referred to by name with the ‘guix’
commands.  Instead, you’d have to do, say:

  guix build -e '(@ (yagnesh packages) my-emacs)'

This looks up the ‘my-emacs’ variable in the (yagnesh packages) module,
which is assumed to be in Guile’s search path.

HTH,
Ludo’.

Re: User defined custom packages.

[Mark H Weaver]

Yagnesh Raghava Yakkala <hi@yagnesh.org> writes:

> Is there place where I can put custom defined package definitions?. This is
> similar to ".emacs". I use (and contribute) el-get¹ for emacs which allows put
> package definitions (recipes what they are called) in .emacs. Those definition
> can be new packages or overwrite of original definitions in the guix repo as
> per user liking.

At present, the best way to do this is to build and run guix from a git
checkout (using ./pre-inst-env), make your own local branch, and
periodically merge changes from origin/master into your local branch,
or, alternatively, rebase your local changes onto origin/master.

I've been using this method for a while now.  For example, on my local
branch I have gnutls configured to support the system-wide trust store
in /etc/ssl/certs.  I have a private ~/bin/guix script that contains
this:

  #!/home/mhw/.guix-profile/bin/bash
  exec $HOME/guix/pre-inst-env guix "$@"

where $HOME/guix contains a git working directory with my 'mhw' branch
checked out.  When I want to incorporate changes from origin/master:

  git fetch
  git rebase origin/master

    Mark