Re: Mechanism for helping in multi-channels configuration

[Simon Tournier]

Hi Christina,

On sam., 03 févr. 2024 at 15:27, Christina O'Donnell <cdo@mutix.org> wrote:

>   1. Have a script that scrapes all the define-public symbols in every 
> file in
>      every package.

I think you mean ’fold-packages’.

>   2. Have a script that determines the symbols needed by each file. (Macros
>      make this more difficult, but.)

Well, this would be difficult, IMHO.  Somehow, it is what the compiler
does. :-)

>   3. Have both scripts have an incremental version that runs on diffs (for
>      performance).
>   4. Run this for every commit on every branch on every channel caching the
>      result.
>   5. Have a CI script keep this updated for new commits.
>   6. Have a server track incompatibilities.

Here, I think the issue is that one server needs to track all the
channels.  And that’s a too strong assumption, IMHO.

I think the design should be something on channel maintainer side.
Somehow, the main Guix channel could be seen as a Git submodule from the
channel side and the issue is that information is not tracked.

There is this ’.guix-channel’ file which allows to describe channel
dependencies.  And the improvements could be to add more there.  The
question is what to add and how to add it.  Keeping in mind the
simplicity and the maintenance burden-free. :-)


> Full disclosure: I've got nothing lined up for the summer yet, so I'm on the
> prowl for GSoC projects :)

Cool!

In that spirit, one tool that is missing is: search packages in all the
history. Somehow the need is described by this message [1]: how to find
which Guix revision provides which version of Foo?

In addition, “guix search” is slow [2].

Well, I have started the embryo of an extension based on Guile-Xapian
for indexing and improving the search.  Really an embryo. :-)

I think this would fit some GSoC. ;-)


Cheers,
simon

1: Re: List available versions of package.
Philippe Veber <philippe.veber@gmail.com>
Tue, 11 Jun 2019 09:43:08 +0200
id:CAOOOohSzUezKvm=RO0bXRGH3m0eo2x0cOTvd--vARxWoqtceaQ@mail.gmail.com
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2019-06
https://yhetil.org/guix/CAOOOohSzUezKvm=RO0bXRGH3m0eo2x0cOTvd--vARxWoqtceaQ@mail.gmail.com

2: https://issues.guix.gnu.org/issue/39258