Re: Permanently available environments

[Guillaume Le Vaillant <glv@posteo.net>]

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Konrad Hinsen <konrad.hinsen@fastmail.net> skribis:

> Hi Guix,
>
> I would like to migrate more of my software use to Guix-based
> containers, but I haven't yet found a way to handle them that fully
> suits my needs. The root issue is the volatility of environments, and I
> wonder if I am missing some feature to handle them better. Here is my
> current reasoning:
>
> 1. Containers can only be generated using "guix shell" or the older
>    "guix environment". There is no way to generate a container based
>    on a profile. Correct me if I am wrong!
>
> 2. I have been using a plain "guix shell" for a while, but my
>    environments break too often after a "guix pull" to continue this
>    way. Most of my containerized environments contain no
>    security-critical software, so I'd be happy not to update them
>    very often (or not at all). That would be trivial with profiles,
>    but... point 1.
>
> 3. There's the –root option to "guix shell" to protect my environment
>    from the garbage collector. But there is no way to say "use the
>    environment pointed to by that root, no matter when and how it was
>    created". I have to specify the packages with respect to the current
>    Guix version (last "pull"). So if I want to protect against updates,
>    I have to use "guix time-machine" with "guix shell". Which is fine
>    in theory.
>
> 4. In practice, I often work with a bad or non-existing network
>    connection, so I must be sure to have all my packages in the store.
>    And if I use "time-machine", I must also keep the required Guix
>    version locally available. But there is no option for that in
>    "time-machine". The Guix versions it downloads are garbage-collected
>    after a while. So I can find myself in the situation of having all
>    the packages for my environment in the store, but unable to access
>    it without a network connection, because "time-machine" first needs
>    to fetch an old Guix version again.
>
> Did I overlook anything?
>
> Cheers,
>   Konrad

Hi,

Wouldn't creating a profile with something like

  guix package -m path/to/manifest.scm -p path/to/profile

and then loading it with

  guix shell -q -C -p path/to/profile

do what you want?

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