Re: What’s next?

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Catonano <address@hidden> writes:

> 2017-05-24 18:25 GMT+02:00 Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden>:
[…]
>> A friend of mine is having a second look at Guix (not SD yet) and one of
>> the most confusing things initially is `guix pull'.  "When/how do I use
>> that," he asks...and I can only say: I'm not using that...I think we
>> want this to work--or something like this, we talked about this at
>> FOSDEM, but AFAIK everyone is using Guix with Git.
>>
>> He responds with: then *why* is it in the manual.  I have no answer.
>> Possibly I'm wrong and/or my information is outdated?
>>
>
> This is an important point for me too
>
> I realized that everyone is using git and not guix pull just yesterday
[…]
> I think this is a problem. It' s unfair to newcomers and it damages Guix as
> a project because it makes the learning curve steeper with not so much of a
> point why.

There are two reasons why developers use Guix from git:

* it allows them to add new packages and features to Guix itself.  This
  is something “guix pull” doesn’t support well.

* it doesn’t require compiling all of Guix on each update.

The latter is a defect in “guix pull” that we are aware of and working
on.  Progress has already been made in improving “guix pull”, but it
takes time.  It is not by design that “guix pull” is currently less
desirable than working from a git checkout.

--
Ricardo

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