bug#57315: guix upgrade --dry-run output is basically useless

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

"bdju" <bdju@tilde.team> skribis:

> On Sun Aug 21, 2022 at 1:39 AM CDT, Csepp wrote:
>> This should go without saying, but this is pretty bad UX.
>>
>> Is there something that can be done about this?  The upgrade process on
>> less powerful machines is pretty awful currently.
> Agreed. Upgrading on Guix can be pretty horrible. Especially when you
> find out you're seemingly the only user of certain packages so you hit a
> bunch of build failures that you would've expected to be found and fixed
> already, and you have to skip and/or report them and redo the upgrades
> repeatedly. On most distros I would upgrade daily without worry, but
> with Guix System I end up putting it off a week or two and trying to
> plan out a time when I don't mind my CPU being maxed out entirely with
> builds and such.

That’s a pretty bad experience that we should improve (my personal
experience is nicer: I upgrade my system and home roughly weekly and
usually without having to build anything locally).

Now, I think it’s a mistake to “expect” build failures “to be found and
fixed already”: you’re part of the process, you too can find, report,
and fix build failures.  Of course one has other obligations in life
too, but if each one of us does a small part, it’ll work better.

Thanks,
Ludo’.