Re: Another update on the Guix Data Service

[Christopher Baines]

Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> writes:

> Christopher Baines <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> There's now a page to compare two derivations [4], it's not a
>> particularly clear comparison yet, but can hopefully be improved in the
>> future. This is linked to from the derivation history pages [5].
>>
>> 4: 
>> http://data.guix.gnu.org/compare/derivation?base_derivation=/gnu/store/j3n1y6ak2hxs838lm6xx3akljf0xh5qd-guix-1.0.1-10.41b4b71.drv&target_derivation=/gnu/store/x6zncwgmmhf1lq7p805ixhaqfhwdxybk-guix-1.0.1-11.f38eabe.drv
>> 5: 
>> http://data.guix.gnu.org/repository/1/branch/master/package/guix/derivation-history
>
> I didn’t know about this and it’s really cool!  It’s often necessary to
> compare derivations when you want to understand what’s going on.
>
> Do you think there’s derivation comparison code out there that could
> make it into (guix derivations) or similar, with an eye on perhaps
> having a CLI derivation comparison tool using the same code in the
> future?

I'm not sure any of the Guix Data Service code is worth moving across,
but it might be worth trying to make something better that uses the
records in Guix, and then using that in the Guix Data Service.

>> Provide narinfo and nar files for derivations, and the required source
>> files ([12] for example). This means the Guix Data Service can be used
>> as a substitute server for derivations, for example [13].
>>
>> 12: http://data.guix.gnu.org/l9kznkzkwj1hilbx39nrnlkpl1s6rxz1.narinfo
>> 13: guix build --substitute-urls="http://data.guix.gnu.org 
>> https://ci.guix.gnu.org"; 
>> /gnu/store/l9kznkzkwj1hilbx39nrnlkpl1s6rxz1-hello-2.10.drv
>
> Well done.  :-)
>
> I’m interested in making sure we can share the relevant code between
> (guix scripts publish) and the Data Service if that’s not already the
> case.

I don't think I had any big problems duplicating code in (guix scripts
publish), however, it might be worth looking at perhaps trying to
identify similarities if there are cases where duplication can be
avoided.

>> In particular, I'm still thinking about;
>>
>>  - Automated code review for Guix patches, which I was working on when I
>>    started working on the Guix Data Service, and most of the
>>    functionality can be beneficial there.
>
> Yeah, I think at the Guix Days you showed how to take advantage of the
> Data Service while reviewing patches; perhaps we should write down a
> tutorial or something.

Yep, I'm definately hoping it's getting close to the point where it can
be useful.

>>  - The Guix Weekly News project I was working on recently uses data from
>>    the Guix Data Service, and that's what motivated storing the channel
>>    news entries.
>
> Yup, that looked nice!  What’s missing, actually?

I haven't sorted anything out to automatically update the data, and
"publish" the news articles.

I also need to improve the large lists of packages, as that isn't very
useful.

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