Re: Inconsistency between "guix system" and "guix package"

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hey hey!

Alex Kost <address@hidden> skribis:

> Hartmut Goebel (2017-09-22 14:13 +0200) wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I just stepped into problems listing the generations of "system". Then I
>> found out:
>>
>> "guix system" uses sub-commands
>>
>>     guix system list-generations
>>     guix system roll-back
>>     guix system switch-generation
>>
>> Contrary to this "guix package" uses options:
>>
>>     guix package --list-generations
>>     guix package --switch-generation
>>     guix package --roll-back
>>     guix package --delete-generations
>>
>> Please also note there is no "guix system delete-generations"!
>>
>> This difference is confusing. Should I report this as a bug?
>
> I think it's not a bug, just some inconsistency that was accumulated
> with time.  I also asked about it 2 years ago:
>
>   http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-10/msg00960.html
>
> My understanding is that people would agree on unified actions/options
> for "package" and "system" commands.  The problem is that no one has
> worked in this direction :-)

That’s a good summary.  :-)

There’s also the problem that ‘guix package’ needs to support multiple
actions on the same line, for transactions, as in:

  guix package -i guile -r python

So we cannot just have “guix package install” or “guix package remove”.

Thoughts?

It’s one of these simple problems that appear to lack a simple solution.
:-)

Ludo’.