Re: Improving the usability of 'guix environment'

[Ludovic Courtès]

David Thompson <address@hidden> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> David Thompson <address@hidden> skribis:
>>
>>> But all of that boilerplate is unnecessary since it's not possible to
>>> actually build the package successfully without a proper hash of the
>>> source AFAICT.  Really, I would rather just use a simple list of
>>> packages:
>>>
>>>     (list autoconf automake guile-2.0 guile-json libgcrypt)
>>
>> What about adding a case for the handling of ‘-l’ such that, if the file
>> evaluates to a list of packages, it does what you suggest?
>
> I'm hesitant to do that, because I would also like for a list of
> packages to be usable for building the environment as it's done
> currently.  Only allowing a single package in a file is a limitation
> right now.

Yeah.

>>> I propose adding a new flag that indicates whether we want the packages
>>> themselves or their inputs in the environment.  If we assume that the
>>> default behavior is to include the packages themselves, a --inputs flag
>>> could indicate to use the package(s) inputs instead:
>>>
>>>     guix environment --inputs emacs
>>
>> That makes sense.
>>
>> In terms of UI, what about rather something keeping an interface close
>> to that of ‘guix package’:
>>
>>   guix environment -i guile guile-sdl
>>   # semantically equivalent to ‘guix package -i guile guile-sdl’
>
> So without the -i switch, it would behave as it does now?  Okay, but I
> guess I would prefer to optimize for the common case, which in my case
> would be having -i on by default.
>
>> Now that I think of it, we could even move -E to ‘guix package’ itself:
>> that would make it easy to create a scratch environment based on an
>> existing profile.
>
> I'm a bit confused about that.  Are you suggesting we merge 'guix
> environment' into 'guix package'?

A possibility might be to:

  • keep ‘guix environment’ as is; after all, ‘guix environment emacs’
    really reads as “the environment for [the development of] Emacs”;

  • add a -E option to ‘guix package’ (like the -E of ‘guix
    environment’).

Example:

  # start a shell where guile and guile-sdl are available in addition to
  # what’s in ~/.guix-profile
  $ guix package -i guile guile-sdl -E $SHELL

  # start a shell where only guile and guile-sdl are available
  $ guix package -i guile guile-sdl --scratch -E $SHELL

  # start a shell in an environment which is my profile minus emacs
  # plus vim and with an upgraded zile
  $ guix package -r emacs -i vim -u zile --pure -E $SHELL

Hmm.

I’ve not completely convinced myself.

Maybe keeping it in ‘guix environment’ is wiser.  I’m not quite sure
that changing the default behavior is desirable though.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.