The thing is that I want those dependencies in order to illustrate the bug
that the readline module for guile is not available.

On Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 00:11 Jack Hill <jackhill@jackhill.us> wrote:

> On Fri, 12 Jun 2020, Josh Marshall wrote:
>
> > Hello all,
> >
> > I ran into an issue where the readline module isn't available for the
> > guile repl after installing `guile-readline`.  It can be replicated
> > via:
> >
> > `echo "(use-modules (ice-9 readline))" | guix environment --pure guile
> > guile-readline -- guile`
> >
> > So with that, I'm pretty sure it isn't just me.
>
> I think you actually want to be using a different guix environment
> command.
>
> guix environment --pure --ad-hoc guile guile-readline
>
> should get you what you want. The difference is that without --ad-hoc,
> what you're asking for is an environment with all the dependencies of
> guile and guile-readline. This is useful, for instance, if you want to
> work on those packages. In this case, guile is available because
> guile-readline depends on it, but nothing depends on guile-readline, so it
> is not in the environment.
>
> With --ad-hoc, you specify the the packages you want in the environment
> explicitly.
>
> See the manual [0] for more information and more advanced usage of
> environment.
>
> [0]
> https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-environment.html
>
> This isn't the first time the --ad-hoc has caused confusion. I tend to use
> that option more often than not. There was previous discussion [1] about
> making environment more friendly to use interactively without breaking
> compatibility, but more work is still needed on that front.
>
> [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-12/msg00126.html
>
> Hope that helps,
> Jack
>