Re: Thoughts on making Guix even better

[Raghav Gururajan]

Hello Leo!

> This is not as much a guix package vs. guix system issue as it is an
> issue of explicit manifests against implicit ones. If you use guix
> package with manifests and without inferiors, you will have the same
> problem. Likewise, you can use inferiors in your config.scm to
> mitigate some of those issues. At least it works for the kernel, but
> it should in theory also work for packages.

I see.

> PS: What you're envisioning is probably a front-end, that obscures the
> very existence of a config.scm by managing one that is just as verbose
> as guix-generated manifests are. However, this is not really a
> solution as it fails to address the need for a (human-readable) initial
> configuration. The interface would also be a pain to deal with as each
> service comes with its own configuration record allowing arbitrary lisp
> expressions that one would have to write on the command line.

I think we can still maintain the guix way of doing config.scm and also bring 
modularity. My thought is, what if we could split the operating-system 
procedures into smaller procedures, such as, kernel, system-wide packages, 
services etc. into separate procedures? So if a user passes the procedure name 
to the `guix system reconfigure` command, then only that procedure is 
reconfigured. For example, we can reconfigure kernel of the system without 
reconfiguring packages and services.

What do you think?

Regards,
RG.