bug#50606: Add support for other formats of Guix channels

[zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On Thu, 16 Sept 2021 at 19:41, EuAndreh <eu@euandre.org> wrote:

> My proposal was a little more crude: get the channel code from a tarball.  In
> this model there are no authentications with fingerprint or signed commits,
> neither "guix pull" would know much about the before/after state of a channel
> besides comparing the checksum of the whole tarball.

Somehow, IIUC your explanations, you would like to be able to set an
'origin' as channel source.  Something like that:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(cons*
 (origin
   (method url-fetch)
   (uri "https://example.org/archive.tar.gz")
   (sha256
    (base32
     "0ssi1wpaf7plaswqqjwigppsg5fyh99vdlb9kzl7c9lng89ndq1i")))
 (channel
  (name 'extra)
  (url "https://example.org/extra.git"))
 %default-channels)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Therefore, it would be possible to have any VCS already supported.

However, it is fixed and update means change at least the checksum to
the channels.scm file.

Well, I do not know if it is more convenient than what Ludo and Leo
suggested. :-)


Cheers,
simon