bug#68264: awscli@2.2.0 downloads and runs a docker container from a large american corporation

[Collin J. Doering]

One thing I deeply appreciate about Gnu Guix is the fact that I have assurance 
that I have installed and am using software that respects my fundamental 
software freedoms. My understanding based on Guix's packaging guidelines 
(https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Packaging-Guidelines.html) is that a 
package should include all necessary software, libraries and resources 
necessary for the program to function; either directly or via dependencies. 
However, it appears that awscli@2.2.0 (and all former versions of the v2 
variant of awscli) download a docker image and run it. This is evident by the 
following, where guix shell is used to run awscli@2.2.0 in a container, but 
docker and its daemon are not present.

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
➜ guix shell -C awscli@2.2.0 -- awsv2 --version
2.2.0
AWS CLI v2 command: docker run -i --rm -v /home/collin/.aws:/root/.aws -v 
/home/collin:/aws amazon/aws-cli
14:45:09 - awscliv2 - ERROR - Executable not found: docker
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

I propose awscli@2.2.0 be removed immediately from guix.

Kind regards

PS: I have a packaged version of awscliv2 (2.15.6) available 
https://git.rekahsoft.ca/rekahsoft/rekahsoft-guix/src/branch/master/rekahsoft-gnu/packages/python-xyz.scm#L244-L329

It is still in need of some cleanup, and awscli is in an odd place (given the 
dependencies they vendor and fork), but it does work, and it depends on 
sources. This also follows closely to what nix does (see 
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/tools/admin/awscli2/default.nix).

-- 
Collin J. Doering

http://rekahsoft.ca
http://blog.rekahsoft.ca
http://git.rekahsoft.ca

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