Optional runtime dependencies in Guix

[Gammel Holte <gammel.holte@gmail.com>]

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Hello,

I'm glad to see all interesting ideas from Nix being implemented as a DSL
on top of Scheme, which makes an awesome combination.

That said, I would like to bring up an issue I've faced multiple times
while using Nix, hoping that Guix can adopt a better solution here:
optional runtime dependencies.

Nix doesn't have a good decoupling between packages and their optional
runtime dependencies. You can disable them, but this would lead to a
different package hash, and thus a different build (negating the use of
prebuilt binaries).

Therefore, the culture seems to have all default package builds with all
optional runtime dependencies on. This leads to situations such as
installing mutt, and getting python as a dependency (via mutt -> gpgme ->
glib -> python), which is quite ugly.

Installing many unneeded packages in your system is undesirable for many
reasons. It has bothered me when using Nix in small embedded systems due to
resource limitations.

I haven't come up with any solution that also preserves purity. Perhaps one
needs to draw a line between what is a package dependency and what isn't.
In my option, a glib build is the same in the presence or absence of
python, just like firefox is the same whether you have flash installed or
not.

Alex.

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