Re: How about a 'guix-test-drive.scm'

[myglc2]

address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> myglc2 <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> I installed guixSD on a headless server by cloning bare-bones.scm.  So
>> far, this is a highly enjoyable ride, thank you!
>>
>> IMHO it would be better if bare-bones.scm did not set the SSH port to
>> 2222, since this tripped me up, and I am guessing it might befuddle
>> others.
>
> Oh, I see.  This #:port-number thing was here mostly to show people how
> to specify options, which I think is important, and I thought that
> people would quickly notice the thing.  But I don’t know!
>
>> Another suggestion: for someone like me wanting to test drive guix
>> quickly, it would sure be helpful if there was a 'guix-test-drive.scm'
>> that includes emacs, guile, and everything else needed to try and enjoy
>> all the cool features described in the guix INFO pages and/or shown in
>> the "The Emacs of Distros" video.
>>
>> Further, it might be good to have two versions ...
>>
>> - guix-test-drive-desktop.scm
>>
>> - guix-test-drive-headless-server.scm - emacs set to run over both tty
>>   and X11
>>
>> In the meantime, does anyone have any bits and pieces of such a .scm
>> they would care to share?
>
> It seems to me that it’s just a matter of adding Emacs to the ‘packages’
> field no?  Or did you have anything else in mind?

Yes I did this, and I have now gone down this road for ~ 1 month. Along
the way I hit a number of bugs which are fixed or being fixed. I now
have a system config that sort of works with some open issues &/or
work-arounds (e.g., X11 forwarding, fonts, and the emacs load path)

However it is not clear that we should continue with this approach.  The
comments that I received along the way ("e.g., why are you doing it this
"silly" way? why not install in the user profile") suggest that most
users run emacs from the user profile.

So I recently tried the user-profile appraoch and this seems more mature
(e.g., less buggy/glitchy). It is also simple to describe:

$ guix -m emacs-test-drive.scm
$ emacs

So now I think this is what we should document as the "emacs test
drive".  This would have these additional benefits:

- it applies equally to Guix and GuixSD
- it encourages a user to try a non-trivial manifest

So..., if this sounds good to you, I propose to work toward this.

Best, - George