Re: User-profile search paths should include system-profile directories

[Alex Kost]

Carlos Sánchez de La Lama (2016-09-20 09:39 +0200) wrote:

> Hi,
>
>>> Is this the intended behaviour? I am wondering whether packages with
>>> search paths should include both the user-profile directories and the
>>> system-profile ones.
>>
>> I think you’re right.  This was discussed at
>> <http://bugs.gnu.org/20255>, leading to a patch (for GuixSD).
>>
>> However, we failed to build consensus around the approach of this patch,
>> so we did not apply it.  If you have ideas, please email
>> address@hidden  :-)
>
> what about something like:
>
> - /etc/profile
>   # [...]
>   GUIX_PROFILES="/run/current-system/profile:$HOME/.guix-profile"
>   . /run/current-system/profile/etc/profile
>   # [...]
>   . "$HOME/.guix-profile/etc/profile"
>   # [...]
>
> - /run/current-system/profile/etc/profile
>   profiles="${GUIX_PROFILES:=/gnu/store/<hashA>-profile}"
>   export PATH="${profiles//:/\/bin}/bin ${profiles//:/\/sbin}/sbin"
>   # [...]
>
>
> - $HOME/.guix-profile/etc/profile
>   profiles="${GUIX_PROFILES:=/gnu/store/<hashB>-profile}"
>   export ACLOCAL_PATH="${profiles//:/\/share/aclocal}/share/aclocal"
>   # [...]
>
> That is, each profile adds all its search paths to all the profile roots
> passed in the colon separated variable GUIX_PROFILES. If GUIX_PROFILES
> is empty, it adds the search paths inside its own directory only (as
> until now).

I think it was mentioned somewhere in the bug discussion: this will not
work for some things.  For example, if a user has 'guile' in a system
profile, and several guile packages (but not 'guile' itself) in
~/.guix-profile, then GUILE_LOAD_PATH will include
"<system-profile>/share/guile/site/2.0" but not
"<user-profile>/share/guile/site/2.0".  That's why combining profiles
inside "guix package --search-paths" command looks like the only
solution.

-- 
Alex