Re: February update on data.guix.gnu.org and the Guix Data Service

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

Christopher Baines <address@hidden> skribis:

> Another update on the Guix Data Service, I sent out the last update on
> the 5th of January [1].
>
> 1: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2020-01/msg00073.html

I hadn’t yet got around to reading this message.  We really need
Guix Weekly News.  :-)

> Derivations for system tests [3], as well as channel instances [4]
> (which relate to guix pull) are now captured. This is still a work in
> progress, I think only the x86_64-linux derivations for the system tests
> are captured, and the systems for the channel instances are limited by
> what's available in the qemu-binfmt service.
>
> 3: 
> http://data.guix.gnu.org/revision/3dd311e3a059131ef245417106d4fb659222ef3c/system-tests
> 4: 
> http://data.guix.gnu.org/revision/3dd311e3a059131ef245417106d4fb659222ef3c/channel-instances

Neat!

> The way cross-built derivations are handled has changed. Previously the
> system values were used, but I've now tried to move in the direction of
> using GNU triplets. This can be seen on the revision pages in the
> derivations table [5].
>
> 5: http://data.guix.gnu.org/revision/3dd311e3a059131ef245417106d4fb659222ef3c

Woohoo!

[...]

> Related to this, I've also added some code to enable removing data for a
> branch, and removing unreferenced derivations. This is both for cleaning
> up the data.guix.gnu.org database now I only want data for master, but
> it should also be useful when using the Guix Data Service in an
> environment where branches come and go, or be the basis of setting a
> retention period for the data.

Nice.  Were you concerned specifically of unbounded growth on the
data.guix.gnu.org instance?

It would be interesting for data.guix.gnu.org to keep as much data as
possible, including perhaps for branches that have been deleted.  Then
the problem becomes more of a UI problem: how to display, for instance,
only the “active” branches on the main page.

WDYT?

> I forget exactly when, but recently I've been trying to revive the patch
> review setup I was working on around a year ago [6]. I've setup an
> instance of the Guix Data Service for this [7] (separate to the
> data.guix.gnu.org one). I might try and have that instance of the Guix
> Data Service process all the branches in the Guix git repository, now
> that data.guix.gnu.org doesn't do that.
>
> 6: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-02/msg00089.html
> 7: https://guix-patches-data.cbaines.net/

Yay!

At the Guix Days, you also shown very concretely how people could take
advantage of data.guix.gnu.org in their patch review workflow.  Perhaps
it’d be useful to share that info here or in the manual, even if it’s
still evolving.

> Back to features though, the output from inferior processes used when
> loading data for a revision is now captured and stored in the
> database. This means you can see more of what's going on, like the
> building of libgit2 here for example [8]. Previously you got less
> information [9].
>
> 8: http://data.guix.gnu.org/job/14657
> 9: http://data.guix.gnu.org/job/14610

Great.

Could you make a support request on Savannah to enable commit
notifications on the repo?  That’d be awesome.  :-)

Thanks for the great update, as always!

Ludo’.