An update on ‘core-updates’

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello Guix!

Several of us have been fiddling with the ‘core-updates’ branch for a
while.  I think there’s now consensus that the branch is really
dedicated to core packages and (guix build …) modules, as embodied in
the new ‘core-packages’ team¹.

We’ve updated GCC 11.x, glibc, binutils, and various packages from (gnu
packages base).  Notable exceptions are Coreutils, Findutils, sed, and
tar; I tried but that’s a bit more work, notably because their variants
in commencement.scm would no longer build because their build scripts
use sed patterns not supported by Gash-Utils.

Long story short: I’d like us to freeze and merge the branch ASAP,
notably because the glibc graft on ‘master’ leads to a bad user
experience.  I’m happy with the current state of the branch and wouldn’t
mind postponing remaining upgrades for the next cycle.

Thoughts?

Remaining work includes: checking that cross-compilation targets still
work after the recent Binutils updates, checking i586-gnu (GNU/Hurd) and
other platforms, and possibly addressing the Gawk non-determinism
issue².

Currently package subsets are built here:

  https://ci.guix.gnu.org/jobset/core-updates
  https://guix.bordeaux.inria.fr/jobset/guix-core-updates

I don’t think I can commit to coordinating the stabilization effort
though as I’m busy with other things this month.  Would anyone like to
take the lead on this?

Happy updating!

Ludo’.

¹ https://issues.guix.gnu.org/67880
² https://issues.guix.gnu.org/68378