Re: Creating a reliable bootstrap for building from source

[Ludovic Courtès]

Pjotr Prins <address@hidden> skribis:

> On Sun, May 14, 2017 at 11:32:06PM +0200, Ludovic Court??s wrote:
>> Pjotr Prins <address@hidden> skribis:
>> 
>> > The combination of 'guix pull' held a promise, were it not that pull is
>> > also iffy. Probably for pretty much the same reason.
>> >
>> > The bootstrap+configure scripts try to work that, but actually
>> > address a wider case. I.e. people who want to bootstrap in Debian etc.
>> > I don't think we need al that. I write Makefile.guix for my projects
>> > and they tend to be simple! Once you can assume Guix is there life
>> > gets simple as a developer - except when you try to bootstrap :0
>> >
>> > The instruction I would like to write for others is:
>> >
>> > 1. Install the latest bootstrap-guix-from-source package after a guix pull
>> > 2. git clone guix && cd guix
>> > 3. run make -f Makefile.guix  
>> >
>> > (no configure is needed in guix!)
>> >
>> > 4. ./pre-inst guix etc. etc.
>> 
>> I think there are two very different use cases.
>> 
>> As a user I want something like 'apt-get update', which is what 'guix
>> pull' tries to do.
>
> Sure. But from my previous E-mail you can see we are effectively using
> pull to bootstrap the source tree build.

Sure.

>> For Guix developers, I think it's reasonable to have a traditional GNU
>> build system.  After all, Guix is also a regular software package that
>> people can build from source with './configure && make && make install'.
>
> My point is that we can simplify. I like simple. Simple is good.
>
> We can have both the configure and a simple Makefile.guix option. That
> is what I do with my projects.
>
> We do not need bootstrap, autoconf and configure on a running Guix
> system. We do need it for other distributions.

I agree.  build-aux/build-self.scm, which is what ‘guix pull’ runs to
build Guix, is close to what you’re suggesting, IIUC: a pure-Guile build
script.  WDYT?

Ludo’.