Re: Install `guix pull'ed Guix to target partition on system install

[Carlo Zancanaro <carlo@zancanaro.id.au>]

Hi Simon!

On Tue, Dec 22 2020, zimoun wrote:
> It is.  If you do:
>
>   (live) guix pull
>   (live) guix system init
>
> then it appears expected to install what the system describes 
> *and* the current guix used to install them.  Therefore, after 
> reboot, the first “guix pull” will not fetch all the substitutes 
> Guix requires, because you already did.

Part of the issue here is that "guix system init" installs into 
the system the version of Guix that the "guix" package refers to, 
which is always older than the version that you are using to do 
the installation. The "guix" package points to a specific commit 
(4f621a2b003e85d480999e4d0630e9dc3de85bc3 in my current guix 
version) which must have come prior to the commit of the guix that 
is running (which for me is 
5795f566fae85023c6be86fe62388c29e6ac5c51).

This also means that the installed system doesn't include the 
installed channels in the system Guix, as the Guix version 
referenced by the "guix" package does not include any external 
channels.

> Other said,
>
>   (live) guix pull
>   (live) guix describe
>   (live) guix system init
>   (live) reboot
>   (real) login as root
>   (real) guix describe
>
> The 2 ’describe’ should be the same commit and apparently they 
> are not.

This expectation is wrong. The two "describe"s should return 
different commits, and the second one should be earlier than the 
first.

Unfortunately, I am not aware of a solution to the issue Pierre 
has raised.

Carlo