bug#35942: guix install: environment variable message is very confusing

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> Robert Vollmert wrote:
>>> Suggestion to instead print:
>>>
>>> Set the following environment variables to use <package> right away:
>>
>> Thanks for the bug report!  Related (not duplicate) thread:
>>
>> <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-02/msg00362.html>
>
> I don’t think we reached a conclusion back then.  I’m fine with Robert’s
> suggestion, but do people think it will really help?
>
> Others were in favor of dropping this message altogether, which I think
> wouldn’t be a good idea: how would people discover about search path
> handling?

I was in favour of *replacing* the message with the suggestion to run

   export GUIX_PROFILE=/this/profile
   source $GUIX_PROFILE/etc/profile

because it usually does the right thing.

It looks less overwhelming than the individual list of environment
variables.  I’ve seen a lot of people who added all of these variables
to their bashrc (or bash_profile if they talked to me before), which is
not what we want to encourage.

We can also hint at “guix package --search-paths” to see a full list of
environment variables for people who want to set them manually right
here and now.

--
Ricardo