Re: Return back original implementation for text-config serialization

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Andrew,

Andrew Tropin <andrew@trop.in> skribis:

>> Making Guix Home part of Guix was and still is a commitment, in
>> particular the commitment that we’d all be working on one
>> implementation, that there are no “competitive incompatible
>> implementations”.  It’s a choice we made, not a phenomenon we’re
>> passively observing.
>
> This is exactly what I want to achieve: To be able to collectively work
> on one consistent implementation, but fee0bc, which slipped to the
> master unreviewed, splitted home service configuration approach into two
> competitive implementations, a few essential home services in guix repo
> and bigger rest of non-essential stuck in rde.

I love that rde is going much further than Guix, but I think it’s in
nobody’s interest to “compete”.

The change in question was discussed at length and reviewed at
<https://issues.guix.gnu.org/50967>.

> I already mentioned at least two possible ways to handle this
> situtation:
> 1. Rewrite the rest of rde home services.
> 2. Rollback this change.
>
> I'm ok with both options, but #1 requires much more human hours to
> complete and I still not sure if fee0bc was introduced for strong
> reasons or was added almost accidentially.  So I try to find a
> justification for this change.

I don’t want to cause troubles in rde for you and its users, but I also
don’t want Home decisions to be discussed there.

>> Are there Guix Home issues reporting this?
>>
>
> Just a 3 cases I observed in Guix Russia telegram chat.

OK.  I don’t see anything at <https://issues.guix.gnu.org> though, which
is where I’d expect bug reports for Guix Home.

[...]

>> Are there any new arguments since the already lengthy discussions that
>> led to fee0bced7fec2f9950957976a28f033edd4f877c?  Is it really what’s
>> leading to Guix Home being stale, or is there something else?
>
> IMO, changes to text-config in fee0bc really makes it harder to continue
> the work on many Guix Home related tasks.

It feels exaggerated to me, but that’s perhaps because I’m overlooking
important aspects.

I’d like us to move forward on this.  I think the best course of action
is to focus on concrete things rather than abstract design discussions.

Can we move, one by one, a few more services from rde to Home?

Earlier I mentioned the SSH client service, but there are more.  When we
move them, let’s see if problems arise related to this pattern or to
other changes made in Guix Home.  At that point perhaps it’ll be clearer
for everyone (or at least for me) what concrete problems this poses and
how we could address it.

How does that sound?

In the meantime I submitted a patch for my first Home service this
week-end.  :-)

Thanks,
Ludo’.