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Re: Early feedback on Guix Home
From: |
Ludovic Courtès |
Subject: |
Re: Early feedback on Guix Home |
Date: |
Sat, 10 Jul 2021 16:18:11 +0200 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.2 (gnu/linux) |
Hi,
(Sorry for the late reply…)
Andrew Tropin <andrew@trop.in> skribis:
> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
[...]
>>>> Possible action:
>>>>
>>>> 1. Change config records to accept file-like objects instead of
>>>> strings. That way, users can choose to have snippets inlined (in a
>>>> ‘plain-file’ object) or separate (via ‘local-file’). See for
>>>> example how ‘tor-configuration->torrc’ does it.
>>>
>>> Yeah, there is a ‘slurp-file-gexp’ procedure that let’s one read an
>>> extenal file, but using existing APIs like ‘local-file’ is probably a
>>> better idea.
>>
>> Yes, it feels more natural. Also, ‘slurp-file-gexp’ returns a gexp (a
>> code snippet), but as a user you don’t know where that snippet is going
>> to be inserted; it may not work in some contexts.
>
> Acually, the idea behind `slurp-file-gexp` is that you always know where
> it will be inserted, because it will be inside the specific section of
> the configuration. Take a look at emacs home-service example:
> https://git.sr.ht/~abcdw/rde/tree/master/item/gnu/home-services/emacs.scm#L91
What I mean is that, in a general sense, one cannot know whether the
gexp will be inserted in a place where it’s “valid”. Consider the
following examples, where the gexp is meant to be inserted in lieu of
“PLACEHOLDER”:
#~(list '(#$PLACEHOLDER)) ;it’s quoted
#~(let ((call-with-input-file (const #f)))
#$PLACEHOLDER)
These are “hygiene” problems discussed in the “Code Staging in GNU Guix”
paper.
All this to say that, from an API viewpoint, I think it’s (1) more
robust, as I wrote, and (2) clearer to expect file-like objects in such
places. It’s clearer because users can be expected to have an
understanding of what ‘local-file’ does, whereas ‘slurp-file-gexp’ is
more involved.
I hope this clarifies what I had in mind!
Ludo’.