Re: Registering GC roots

[Alex Vong <alexvong1995@gmail.com>]

On 16/10/2015, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:
> Alex Vong <alexvong1995@gmail.com> skribis:
>
>> Talking about interactive CLIs, in general I am not a fan of it too,
>> especially after you get used to the program. That's why I am using
>> plain apt-get instead of aptitude which uses ncurses. However, I will
>> say it is sometimes useful. For example, in git clean, there is an
>> `-i' switch, which can help if you don't want to mess with your
>> .gitignore file. So perhaps making something GC roots is like putting
>> it in .gitignore in git, but we should still provide a way for
>> interacting GC-ing.
>
> Currently there are two documented ways to add GC roots from the command
> line: creating a profile with ‘guix package’, and using the -r option of
> ‘guix build.’
>
> What David suggests is to add a similar -r option to ‘guix environment’,
> which sounds good to me.
>
I see. So currently there is no way to make an environment GC root and
David is proposing using -r to achieve it. Am I right?

> The GC process itself will not be interactive.  Who would want to hit
> ‘y’ or ‘n’ for each one of the thousands of files considered?  :-)
>
Indeed, option 3 [3. ask for every directories (like interactive
`rm')] looks silly. What is your opinions on a big yes/no? Perhaps it
is useful for beginners who may not know the "power" of GC?

> Ludo’.
>