Re: [Patch] address@hidden

[Leo Famulari]

On Sun, Jun 05, 2016 at 05:54:34PM -0400, Matthew Jordan wrote:
> 
> > In general, Guix handles this just fine. But somebody has to maintain
> > all those versions ;) We often suggest that if one user needs some old
> > version of a package, they maintain the package privately. For example,
> > using $GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH.
> 
> Ah okay, that makes sense. Does this also also apply to compilers and
> runtime environments? As I have two pachtes for the current versions of
> node (JavaScript runtime), one is the reccomended version and the other
> represents the latest stable version.

There's no hard rule that allows us to keep multiple versions of
compilers and runtimes. I think we keep those around for a variety of
reasons: bootstrapping chains; many packages still require the old
version; it was very difficult to make the package work so it's not
reasonable to ask users to recreate and maintain the old versions
themselves; etc.