Re: Contribute or create a channel?

[Attila Lendvai]

> > channels are a step towards this, but they are not enough in their
> > current form to successfully accommodate for such a setup. an obvious
> > thing that is missing is a way to formally express inter-channel
> > dependencies, including some form of versioning.
> 
> 
> Do we not have this? The manual documents a mechanism for channel
> dependencies in "(guix) Declaring Channel Dependencies".
> 
> I haven't used it, but it looks like the dependencies are declared as
> channels, which can have the usual branch/commit specifications to tie
> them to specific versions.

good point, thanks!

i looked briefly at the code just now. it's not trivial, and it seems to treat 
the guix channel specially (because i don't need to specify it as a dependency 
in my channel's .guix-channel file), and i'm not sure how it behaves when e.g. 
two channels depend on the same channel, but pick two different commits... or 
all the other convoluted situations.

the reason i assumed it doesn't exist is that i've never seen it used by any 
channels that i looked at.


> What are we missing?


i guess it's time to experiment to be able to answer your question.

FTR, it's READ-CHANNEL-METADATA and friends in guix/channels.scm

note that it's not the same thing as /etc/guix/channels.scm, even though they 
appear similar (https://issues.guix.gnu.org/53657).

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• attila lendvai
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