Re: Store channel specification in profile

[Pierre Neidhardt]

zimoun <address@hidden> writes:

>> > Like zimoun writes, it would be nice to have some sort of a “describe”
>> > command for a regular profile.  Actually maybe “guix describe -p”?
>> >
>> > Actually ‘guix describe -p ~/.guix-profile’ works but doesn’t display
>> > anything useful.  We could fix that by recognizing the kind of profile,
>> > somehow.
>>
>> Seems like a good idea.  How do we define "anything useful" though?
>> The provenance of packages?  How would we format it?
>
> As I explained elsewhere, the file <your-profile>/manifest already
> contains almost all the information we need (at least I think we need
> ;-)). But its format is not complaint with the other format (channels,
> manifest). And you answered: it is plumbing! :-)
> My point is: this plumbing manifest file should be more
> "format-friendly" -- still being plumbing -- and easily compliant with
> the --channel or --manifest option, IMHO.

I agree.  But changing the format might break compatibility with existing
functions that rely on it.  In which places are manifests used?

Should we not change the format, should we add a command line option to
convert manifest to "manifest specifications" (those that work with
`-manifest')?  How do we include the provenance in manifest specifications?

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

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