Re: ~/.guix-profile/manifest usage with "guix package -m [manifest]" / "guix pack -m [manifest]" etc..

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi George,

> My thinking is that if there was an easy way to produce “manifests as
> passed to ‘guix package -m’” from profiles, it would be a handy: an easy
> way for someone that has gone down the incremental path to switch to
> manifests and an easy way to update one's manifest after incremental
> changes.

Do you mean something like this?

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(use-modules (guix profiles)
             (ice-9 match)
             (ice-9 pretty-print))

(match (command-line)
  ((_ where)
   (pretty-print
    `(specifications->manifest
      ',(map manifest-entry-name (manifest-entries (profile-manifest where))))))
  (_ (error "Please provide the path to a Guix profile.")))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

You can put this in a file “manifest-to-manifest.scm” and run it like
this from a Guix source checkout:

    ./pre-inst-env guile -s manifest-to-manifest.scm /path/to/.guix-profile > 
my-manifest.scm

You can then proceed to install the generated manifest with:

    guix package -m my-manifest.scm -p /path/to/new/.guix-profile

If that’s what you’re looking for I suppose we could find a place for
something like that under the umbrella of “guix package”.

-- 
Ricardo