Re: Can we speed it up? Prev: compiling guix is too slow?

[Pjotr Prins]

On Mon, Feb 05, 2018 at 09:15:37AM +0100, Konrad Hinsen wrote:
> On 05/02/2018 08:34, Pjotr Prins wrote:
> 
> >compiled yet). Or generate a meta list for a source tree. Or
> >subcategorize packages so only those packages get included that are
> >asked for (assuming there are no deeper dependencies). For example,
> >few people need the bioinformatics packages. We could have the sub
> >section of the graph split out and have people do:
> >
> >   guix package --topic=bio -i samtools
> 
> Or move special-topic packages to separate channels, once they get
> implemented. The hard part is of course *where* to split the graph,
> not how to implement it.

Channels are coming. I agree that bioinformatics could become a
channel - that is what bioconda does for Conda. But for other sections
of the graph (say Ruby) we better not split out to channels. That is
why I am bringing this up as an in-trunk solution.

> >Sectioning the graph may be hard (you'd be inclined to section off
> >languages and window managers), but I think it can be dictated by
> >whether a sub graph can live on its own.
> I wonder if anyone has analyzed the dependency graphs of software
> packages (not necessarily for Guix, some big distribution like
> Debian would be more interesting), with the goal if identifying good
> splits based on simple criteria.

Yeah, that would be a neat exercise. Any student here inclined to have
a go?

Pj.