Re: A friendlier API for operating-system declarations

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hi Edouard,

Edouard Klein <edk@beaver-labs.com> skribis:

> For my clients and my own use, I use a layer on top of operating-system
> declarations in which I create functions that take an os as a first
> argument, and return an os.
>
> With the help of the handy -> macro, I can chain them, thus allowing an
> easy stacking of multiple "roles" or "functionalities" on the same
> machine, and an easy transfer of said functionality to another machine:
> just cut and paste one line from one declaration to the other.
>
> I have written a tutorial for my clients here:
>
> https://guix-hosting.com/docs/tuto/getting-started.html

Very nice!

> After a few months of experience, and positive feedback from my clients,
> my question to you guys is: would you be interested in mainlining this,
> or should I keep my development efforts separate in my channel ?

I think it’s worth considering, taking into account maintenance
considerations as Liliana wrote.

> I do think this API is easier than manipulating services, and although
> extendable services are awesome and a very nifty piece of engineering,
> they require quite a good knowledge of scheme and take a while to be
> used to, while this new API, while way less powerful, lowers the barrier
> to entry for newcomers.

Normally, adding a service amounts to adding a line in the ‘services’
field:

  (operating-system
    ;; …
    (services (append (list (service nginx-service-type) …)
                      %base-services)))

It is more verbose that what you have, but it’s still roughly one line
(or one entry) per service.

Another interesting bit in your channel are templates though: an OS
template for hosting at OVH, etc.  These are very valuable because they
take care of all the boilerplate.

Thanks for sharing!

Ludo’.