Re: "guix potluck", a moveable feast

[Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com>]

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ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Beside, related to Chris’ comment, I’m a bit concerned about versioning
> in such a widely distributed repo.  The package graph in Guix has zero
> degrees of liberty: every package is connected to other packages; every
> Guix user sees the exact same graph.
>
> Here, we’d have to be more flexible and allow potluck.scm files to just
> say “import guile” or “import guile@2.0”; “import guile” might provide
> 2.0 on a machine running an older Guix, and it might give 2.2.9 on an
> up-to-date machine.
>
> IOW, we’re no longer describing one specific graph, but instead
> describing a family of graphs with some constraints.  The benefits are
> decentralization, but the main drawback is non-reproducibility: the
> result would depend on the user machine’s initial state.
>
> To work around that, I think the server should resolve package
> specifications when the potluck.scm file is submitted, and insert each
> package in the Guix package graph of the moment.  Does that make sense?
> Maybe that’s what you were describing when you talk about rewriting
> potluck.scm files so?

When you say "insert each package in the Guix package graph," do you
mean, "add the package definition to the Guix source tree"?

What if "the potluck" maintained a pointer to the version (i.e., the
commit) of the Guix package definitions that it uses as its "base"?
From time to time, the potluck could update its pointer to point to a
more recent version of Guix's package definitions.  In this way, every
version of the potluck would precisely specify the dependencies of all
the packages in that version of the potluck, including any transitive
dependencies that ultimately come from the official Guix package
definitions (as defined in the "base" version); there would be no
surprising version drift.  I wonder if that would work?

What if someone wants to add a package definition to the Guix source
tree which depends on a package that is defined in the potluck?

-- 
Chris

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