Re: [PATCH] Quick-start guide

[yoosty]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 3:51 AM, Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi,

address@hidden skribis:

> After reading the feedback here and spending some more time in IRC (which
> really drives home the feedback about translations and colloquialisms,
> thanks John) I would like to do the following:
> - Add a contiguous set of examples to the existing "System Installation"
> section (such that if you follow the examples you will almost certainly end
> up with a working system, even if you don't read much of anything else)

You mean OS config examples?  Currently there are 3 example
configurations.  We could add more, but I wonder if that wouldn’t be too
much for the manual itself (we could still add more to the installation
image, though.)

> - Add at least one more sub-section to "System Installation" that
> introduces users to extending/customizing the initial system's .scm file
> -- Something like a "Where to go from here? Customizing your installation."
> -- A chance to tease users in to Scheme programming

Makes sense.  The “Using the Configuration System” section was intended
to achieve this, but maybe it’s failing.  Do you think it could be
improved, or is a new section needed, and if so, how should we
articulate both?

I might be viewing this from the wrong angle.. Maybe what's needed is not

necessarily different instructions, but more pointers to the existing instructions :)

Can we put some comments in the current example configs to point to existing

documentation?

e.g.:

diff --git a/gnu/system/examples/bare-bones.tmpl b/gnu/system/examples/bare-bones.tmpl
index 87e8d1e..811a6c3 100644
--- a/gnu/system/examples/bare-bones.tmpl
+++ b/gnu/system/examples/bare-bones.tmpl
@@ -38,6 +38,8 @@
                %base-user-accounts))
 
   ;; Globally-installed packages.
+  ;; See the "System Configuration"/"Globally-Visible Packages"
+  ;; section in the Guix manual for more info
   (packages (cons tcpdump %base-packages))
 
   ;; Add services to the baseline: a DHCP client and

Something else I'm probably just missing.. Is there a way to enumerate
%base-packages from the command line? I've seen you (Ludo) do this a few
times in the videos but I don't recall a mention of instructions for configuring

this setup.

 --

   .:Justin:.