Re: Guix (and Guile's) promise, and how to (hopefully) get there

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hi,

Suhail Singh <suhailsingh247@gmail.com> skribis:

> Specifically, the bulk of patch submissions in Guix deal with packages.
> Barring some core packages, perhaps Guix would be better served by
> splitting other packages into a separate channel.  The organization and
> management of said channel could be optimized for tracking upstream as
> closely as possible.  OpenSUSE's Factory model with OpenQA comes to mind

That’s an idea worth considering in the long term, but it’s very tricky:
how do we decide what gets in?  do we go as far as moving packages from
Guix proper to another channel?  how do we transition?  what API
compatibility guarantees do we make?

> Orthogonally, the project would IMO also benefit by having automated
> testing to ensure that the combination of packages work well together.

One can have their channel under continuous integration with Cuirass for
instance; it works well for this job.

> As things stand today, the incentives for those without commit access
> are such that it makes better sense for them to focus on their own
> channels.  This is a shame.

Yeah.  Having lively channels outside Guix is not necessarily a bad
thing though.

Ludo’.