Re: Using --manfistest with <profile>/manifest files

[zimoun]

Dear,

On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 at 19:08, elaexuotee@wilsonb.com wrote:

> I went ahead and read through the threads that Pierre shared in a different
> reply. For posterity and to collect my own thoughts, let me see if I can
> distill the discussion so far:

[...]

> If the answer to the final question above is no, then that seems like a much
> larger problem. However, if the answer is yes, then I would naively expect
> profile reification to be mostly a matter of collecting together all the
> sources of input that define a profile. Does forward-compatibility make this
> less straightforward than I am thinking? What else am I missing?

Thank you for your inputs.

>From my understanding, what you are proposing is a variant of what
Pierre proposes.  To be precise, at Guix Days, Pierre and I discussed to
change a bit the format of <profile>/manifest in order to unify the
current situation of "manifest.scm" (code evaluated) and
"<profile>/manifest" (flat data); as Pierre explained elsewhere in this
thread.  The change of internals will not happen, IMHO, because dealing
with the general case adds too much burden, and the use-case discussed
here -- recreate the exact same profile from another imperative profile
-- does not deserve so much attention, again IMHO.

>From my point of view, it is a technical problem of internal
representation and then of UI.  And Ludo expressed that he is not in
favor for such internal change, because a lot of reasons he explained
elsewhere (argh!  I do not like what I am doing here: be imprecise
without citing exactly, anyway!).

The best, if I understand correctly, is simply to robustify the Pierre's
script and provide a clean '--export-manifest' from a profile which
should be an approximation.


>> Sorry I am too lazy to search, but I think I remember that at the time
>> Pierre sent -- probably in the mega thread :-) -- a small script to
>> extract relevant information from <profile>/manifest; the preliminary
>> for '--export-manifest'. :-)
>
> Perhaps you are thinking of Pierre's script here?
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2020-02/msg00154.html

Yes.


All the best,
simon