Customizing /etc

[Ludovic Courtès]

Alex Kost <address@hidden> skribis:

> 宋文武 (2015-11-24 18:22 +0300) wrote:

[...]

>> So, the plan is add /etc/environment and only use /etc/profile for 2.
>> then, a sh-profile file-like configuration can be added.  WDYT?
>
> I like the idea of separating /etc/environment and /etc/profile, but my
> main concern is to have a possibility to change /etc files the way I
> want, as I explained in the reply to Ludovic.

I agree that specifying what goes into /etc is something we want to
allow (though not directly related to the /etc/profile issue.)

What about exposing the name/file-like pairs that are passed to
‘etc-service’?  That way, one could write:

  (define os
    (operating-system
      ;; …
      (etc-files `(("hosts" ,(local-file "my-hosts-file"))
                   ("issue" ,(plain-file "Hello!\n"))
                   ("sudoers" ,(local-file "sudoers"))
                   ("profile" ,(local-file "myprofile"))
                   ,@(fold alist-delete
                           (default-etc-files os)
                           '("hosts" "issue" "sudoers" "profile"))))))

We may remove the ‘hosts-file’ and ‘sudoers-file’ fields, but keep
higher-level things like ‘name-service-switch’ because they’re more
convenient.

The difficulty is that some of the default files, such as /etc/hosts,
are generated as a function of the ‘operating-system’ declaration.  Thus
I think we need ‘default-etc-files’ to be a procedure as shown above,
and the ‘etc-files’ field must be thunked or delayed.  Hmm not fully
sure this is the right interface.

WDYT?

The bottom line is that /etc is not a great configuration interface
because it’s all flat and GuixSD has no idea of the meaning of those
files and their relationship.  So the preferred approach remains
configuration via services and high-level configuration objects.

Thanks,
Ludo’.