Re: Packagers tutorial, deployment tutorial

[Ludovic Courtès]

Pjotr Prins <address@hidden> skribis:

> In addition to the a packaging tutorial, I would also like a
> deployment tutorial where explain how to do system configuration and
> how to create a caching server/build server in a few steps.
>
> The information is there in the main docs (and source code), but what
> we lack is a short descriptive list what steps one has to go through.

When Florian (fps) was trying to build everything on his machine, we
noticed that yeah, it’s easily done via a couple of Bash lines that call
out to ‘guix build’ and the likes, but we should really provide a
specific command for that, like ‘guix build --all’, at least.

People could set up Hydra, and we could provide GuixSD configurations
that do that (we’ll have to anyway, for the new front-end server), but
that’s too much of a sledgehammer for use cases such as Florian’s.

> Ludo, I am happy to participate in this effort. I would like to
> propose using org-mode on for the initial versions. Simply because I
> am productive that way.

I really think this kind of information should go in the canonical
manual.  “Defining Packages” and “Using the Configuration System” were
intended this way.  I understand they are currently badly structured and
incomplete, but I think we should fix them.

Having a single canonical place for documentation is very important to
me.  This is too often dismissed in favor of chaotic documentation
spread over several random places.

For someone willing to contribute non-trivial documentation, I cannot
imagine Texinfo being a significant barrier.  For the most part, it’s
really trivial.

WDYT?

> Would that be OK? And, despite my own reservations on github's growing
> role, I think at this stage github has the best functionality. Also
> github invites contributions because many people are signed up. For
> the short term, I suggest we use github for the tutorials. Github has
> the right audience for readers too. Once it stabalizes it could go
> into the main Guix tree.

You can use GitHub for your own work if you want, of course.  However,
Guix itself will remain on Savannah, and its procedure will remain
patches sent over email.

I am fine with discussing improvements to our procedures, and I think
it’s important to remain critical.  However, promoting GitHub/GitLab,
their proprietary software, and their inevitable attacks on user privacy
is a no-go for me.

Thanks,
Ludo’.