Re: [META] How to effectively ask for help with Guix?

[Josh Marshall]

Hi Ben.  I've seen some of this, too.  I attribute it to the small
community and userbase.  We just can't compete with the likes of Nix.

On Tue, Jan 2, 2024, 11:52 PM Ian Eure <ian@retrospec.tv> wrote:

> Hi Ben,
>
> I’ve seen some of your posts, and haven’t had any help to offer.
> Your questions remind me of others I’ve seen, where someone gets
> into the weeds of a problem and asks weedy questions, when they
> should be asking big picture questions.  I don’t know for if
> that’s the case here, but it seems like a possibility.  At the
> very least, I’ve found that explaining how I got to the point of
> having a specific question almost always gets better results.  In
> the many, many cases where I’ve been on the wrong path, this has
> allowed people to suggest better approaches that I didn’t know
> about, or hadn’t considered.
>
> I’d also note that the last three weeks are typically a much
> slower time of year for people in the US due to the holidays, and
> that almost certainly means that you’ll get slower responses (if
> any) for this type of thing.
>
>   — Ian
>
> Ben Weinstein-Raun <root@benwr.net> writes:
>
> > [[PGP Signed Part:Undecided]]
> > Hello!
> >
> > I notice that I haven't been able to get much help with Guix,
> > via any
> > route. Having asked six or seven questions[^1] over the last
> > three weeks
> > (on this list, on the subreddit, and on the IRC channel), I've
> > received
> > help with only one of those problems (thanks nckx!). Ultimately
> > I've
> > cobbled together crappy solutions to my problems over that time,
> > but a
> > couple knowledgeable responses could have saved me dozens of
> > hours.
> >
> > I'd love to wholeheartedly recommend Guix, because technically
> > speaking
> > I much prefer it to Nix, and to the "classic" alternatives. I'm
> > hugely
> > grateful that it exists! Of course it's nobody's responsibility
> > to
> > answer beginner questions! But at the moment, I'm going to need
> > to give
> > a big caveat with any recommendation: "The Guix documentation is
> > relatively high-quality, but if you want to understand anything
> > that
> > isn't explained there, you should expect to dive much deeper
> > than you
> > would with most tools, as it's quite hard to get any engagement
> > fr
> > om
> > people who know the answers to your questions."
> >
> > One possibility is that there just aren't many people who know
> > those
> > answers. If that's true, then there's not much to be
> > done. Another is
> > that I've gone about this wrongly somehow, in which case I'd
> > love to
> > know how I could do better (in reply to this message is great,
> > though I
> > also have an anonymous feedback form you can use, if you want to
> > be
> > really ruthless :-) https://forms.gle/8fYoiNedq2g4UTPj8). And
> > another
> > possibility is that I've just been unlucky, either with timing,
> > or with
> > the particular questions I've wanted to ask.
> >
> > Anyway, what, if anything, could I be doing better? I've read
> > and try to
> > follow the advice at
> > http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html,
> > but it's been a while and it occurs to me that I should refresh
> > myself.
> > What else?
> >
> > Thanks for any meta-help!
> >
> > [1]
> > -
> > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2023-12/msg00123.html
> > -
> > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2023-12/msg00160.html
> > -
> > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2023-12/msg00164.html
> > -
> >
> https://www.reddit.com/r/GUIX/comments/18mimv0/user_services_that_run_on_startup/
> > - https://logs.guix.gnu.org/guix/2023-12-16.log#003630
> >
> > [[End of PGP Signed Part]]
> >
>
>