Re: Eliminate environment variable hints?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> skribis:

> when installing a package into a profile Guix very helpfully tells you
> that you may need to set certain environment variables.  It doesn’t tell
> you that these environment variables can also be set by source’ing the
> generated etc/profile file.
>
> I have seen the bashrc and bash_profile files of many users and they are
> usually full of conflicting environment variable definitions.  In these
> files I often also see these Guix recommendations.
>
> I think Guix should suggest sourcing the generated etc/profile file
> instead of listing explicit environment variable definitions.  It would
> be less noisy and less confusing, in my opinion.
>
> What do you think?

When (re)sourcing etc/profile, you might clutter some variables.  For
instance, if you do that several times, you can end up with:

  PATH=$HOME/.guix-profile/bin:$HOME/.guix-profile/bin:$HOME/.guix-profile/bin:…

Conversely, the hint upon installation disappears if the entry is
already present in the variable.

That’s a fine point but I occasionally rely on this as a user.

That said, I understand your concern.  What about changing the message
to:

  You might need to run:

     . …/etc/profile

  Alternately, you can define the following environment variables:

     …

Too verbose?  Confusing?

Thanks,
Ludo’.