Guix scheme code being recompiled when target ARCH changes

[Vincent Legoll]

Hello,

I'm wondering if the following is expected:

I'm build the guix binary tarball for i686 & x86_64 (without changing
any scheme code) and the whole guix codebase gets recompiled for each
of the builds.

I'm doing this:

  ./pre-inst-env make update-guix-package
  git add gnu/packages/package-management.scm
  git commit -m NOT_FOR_UPSTREAM \
    gnu/packages/package-management.scm

  SYSTEM=x86_64-linux
  ./pre-inst-env guix build -s "${SYSTEM}" guix
  ./pre-inst-env guix pack -s "${SYSTEM}" --localstatedir \
    --profile-name=current-guix guix

  SYSTEM=i686-linux
  ./pre-inst-env guix build -s "${SYSTEM}" guix
  ./pre-inst-env guix pack -s "${SYSTEM}" --localstatedir \
    --profile-name=current-guix guix

I intended to run the:

  ./pre-inst-env make "guix-binary.${SYSTEM}.tar.xz"

afterwards.

Are the .scm files recompilations needed ?
What for ?

And as an additionnal question, are the ./pre-inst-envs needed on
all the CLIs above ?

I still have a TODO to put everything I gathered about building the
binary tarballs in the doc.

I also still cannot test on foreign arches, see:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2020-05/msg00213.html

Thanks

--
Vincent Legoll