Re: thesis: guixsd should provide /usr/bin/env

[Ludovic Courtès]

Andy Wingo <address@hidden> skribis:

> On Thu 19 Nov 2015 16:07, address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

[...]

>>> Alternately, I am not sure if this would work but we could make a form
>>> of "guix environment" which populates a profile that is mounted at /usr
>>> in a container.  That would allow many more non-Guix tools to run.
>>
>> Technically ‘guix environment --container’ could create /usr, just like
>> it creates /bin/sh.  Not sure if it’s a good idea, though.
>
> I think it is definitely interesting.  The reason being, you might hack
> on something or have to deploy something and it's not part of Guix --
> you don't want to rewrite the shebang lines for files in git that aren't
> build products.  Being able to make a just-FHS-enough environment inside
> a container sounds to me like a useful tool to have for shimming Guix
> and the outside world, while also benefitting from Guix's reproducible
> environments, rollbacks, isolation, and so on.

Yeah, makes sense.

One can already do:

  guix environment --container --ad-hoc coreutils \
    --expose=$(which env)=/usr/bin/env

Should we add a --fhs or --/usr/bin/env option to simplify this?

Thanks,
Ludo’.