Re: guix gc doesn't seem to clean old guix revision

[zimoun]

Dear,


On Fri, 29 Nov 2019 at 16:14, YOANN P <address@hidden> wrote:

> > As said, it is not a bug of "guix pull" but a bug of the
> > configuration. Adding the root user to your Dockerfile should fix the
> > issue you encounter.
>
> The fact that guix require $USER to be set is IMO a kind of bug and is
> documented anywhere.

I do not understand: running without any $USER is kind of very special
edge case.
In your configuration file [1], you create everything with the
(non-existent) root user and you are doing as they exists, i.e, ENV
PATH, "ln -s", etc. then "guix pull" and because there is no user,
Guix creates the default profile.
I do not see where there is a bug. Guix does not break and it is a
misconfiguration.
IMO, the bug comes from your configuration file. The fix is: create an
user or correctly symlink the profile
(/var/guix/profiles/default/current-guix instead of
/var/guix/profiles/per-user/root/current-guix).


However, I totally agree with you that it lacks documentation about
this user case. Where do you suggest to add such information? A
warning note in the binary installation section [2]? Something else?


[1] 
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rockandska/.dotfiles/084b3c6924eeb985cb40edfc90e3827b10ba61e2/.local/opt/dotfiles-bootstrap/tests/Dockerfiles/Dockerfile
[2] 
https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Binary-Installation.html#Binary-Installation


> It will be less prone to errors to relay for $USER on something like
> `whoami` and for $HOME expanding `~$USER`.

What do you mean?
If there is no user, then there is no user. :-)


> So, not sure if it is normal, but it seems there is an overhead of 166Mo
> between the binary version and after doing 'guix pull' and 'guix gc'.

Interesting. It should deserve more investigation why. :-)


All the best,
simon