Re: Merging wip-guix-home to master

[Xinglu Chen]

On Tue, Sep 28 2021, Andrew Tropin wrote:

> On 2021-09-24 15:38, Xinglu Chen wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Sep 23 2021, Andrew Tropin wrote:
>>
>>> The core part of Guix Home project has been moved from rde
>>> repository[fn:1] to wip-guix-home branch of guix repository.
>>>
>>> I'm about a week on wip-guix-home branch completely and Guix Home works
>>> fine.  There are no any major issues on rde-devel and guix-devel mailing
>>> lists and it seems that branch is ready to be merged.
>>>
>>> My guix describe looks like:
>>> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>>> Generation 114      Sep 17 2021 13:33:55    (current)
>>>   rde 31f8003
>>>     repository URL: https://git.sr.ht/~abcdw/rde
>>>     branch: without-guix-home
>>>     commit: 31f800353a781cef25fc80c05ad824a068a049c8
>>>   guix a2324d8
>>>     repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git
>>>     branch: wip-guix-home
>>>     commit: a2324d8b56eabf8117bca220a507cc791edffd2e
>>> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>>>
>>>
>>> There is a discussion[fn:2] on moving home services to (gnu services
>>> ...)  modules, which is likely to happen, but it's possible to do the
>>> migration relatively painless by re-exporting necessary symbols in
>>> (gnu home-services ...) at first and removing them completely later.
>>>
>>> Another important part of the work related to Guix Home project is
>>> covering related modules and cli with tests, but it can be done in
>>> parallel and is not a blocker for merging.
>>
>> I noticed that the ‘guix home import’ subcommand is included, but I
>> think it needs more thought and feedback from people before it makes its
>> way into ‘master’; it also seems to lack documentation.
>>
>> I just realized that it generates the following service declaration
>>
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>> (service
>>  home-bash-service-type
>>  (home-bash-configuration
>>   (bashrc
>>    (list (slurp-file-gexp
>>           (local-file "/home/yoctocell/.bashrc"))))))
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>>
>> but when running ‘guix home reconfigure’, the ~/.bashrc file will be
>> moved, so when running ‘guix home reconfigure’ for the second time, it
>> would read the ~/.bashrc which is itself a symlink to a file the store.
>> ‘guix home import’ clearly isn’t in a usable state as of right now…
>
> Yep, I remember that it is not documented.  I think it's ok for
> generating a simple sample configuration,

I disagree, I think it’s OK for things like (guix git), which are mainly
used by developers, to not be documented in the manual.  Ideally, the
all the modules would be documented.  :-)

However, ‘guix home import’ will be used by developers and regular
users, and documenting the command should be a requirement.

> but I agree that it's not yet complete, if you wish I'll disable it in
> cli.

I have sent a few patches to fix it and document it[1], so it should
probably left as-is for now.

> Just an idea for the future: it's probably better to copy .bashrc to the
> current directory and do (local-file "./bashrc").

This wouldn’t work if the user doesn’t have write-access to the current
directory, nor if the current directory is $HOME.  I think it’s better
for the user to specify the directory themselves.

[1]: <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/50873>

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