Re: Extending Guix without using the Guile load path

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> skribis:

> I think it’s a bit difficult to install the Guix Workflow Language at
> this point and I’d like to change that.
>
> Currently, new sub-commands for Guix are looked up by module name on the
> Guile load path.  When installing the “gwl” package, though, the Guile
> load path is not automatically altered, so users need to set it up by
> themselves.  The load path is only altered automatically when users
> install the “guile” package.  This is not a good recommendation because
> users may have Guile 2.2 in their profile, and not Guile 3.0 or whatever
> version may be needed by the extension.
>
> I wonder if we can make this a little nicer by letting Guix look for
> sub-command scripts in directories that are listed in an environment
> variable, such as GUIX_EXTENSIONS_PATH.  The “guix” package would set
> this search path and packages wanting to provide a sub-command (such as
> “guix workflow” or “guix home”) would arrange to have their scripts
> placed in that sub-directory of their outputs.
>
> What do you think?

GUIX_EXTENSIONS_PATH sounds like a good idea.  I suppose it could be
implemented pretty much like GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH?

That would also allow us to consider Guix Home a package rather than a
channel, like you did for GWL.

(Though eventually, I do think something like Guix Home should be part
of Guix itself.  :-))

Ludo’.