Re: The future of 'guix environment'

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Thompson, David writes:

> Ricardo, you are correct that we would lose the ability to use the
> guix.scm file for both 'guix environment' and 'guix build'.  In
> practice I don't actually use my guix.scm file this way, so I think
> it's worth breaking, but maybe you (or someone else) actually uses
> this and we should think more about it?

I do use guix.scm for testing `guix build'.  Maybe I ma the only one
though.  It turns out to be very useful to find out whether or not I've
done something that borked my package that's not obvious because I have
some compiled .go file around in working directory or something.

> I wasn't very clear about whether ephemeral or cached would be the new
> default.  I don't think there is one default for all cases, I think
> it's more context sensitive.

I'm a bit confused by caching, but IMO maybe the right solution is
actually guix environment for "environment profiles".  Ie, I want to be
able to update my guix environment and if it turns out I made a mistake
easily roll back, just like I can with my user's profile.  Currently
you can use --root, but you don't have the generations support.