Re: Questions regarding substitutes with debug output

[Olivier Dion]

On Fri, 22 Apr 2022, Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I require debugging symbols of multiple packages.  Some of them
>> already have a debug output from the main guix channel, but others
>> don't.  So I had in mind to make a channel and publish the
>> substitutes with the debug outputs.
>
> In general, if you need debug symbols for something, I think it's OK
> to contribute adding them to Guix proper (in a debug output), unless
> they make like >= 1 GiB (as I can imagine may be the case for IceCat).

Okay I will try.  I'm not sure how easy it is so add debug symbols to some
packages e.g. git, nginx.  In any case I need them, so I will contribute
back to the main channel if it works.

>>   How could I make sure that Guix use my version of Firefox over the one
>>   defined by the main channel?  My guess is to change the name of my
>>   package to something like "my-firefox".  But it would be nicer if I
>>   don't have to do so.  Perhaps there's a way to force channel
>>   preference?
>
> Channels can only extend, not override the default Guix channel (the
> world would be a bit of a mess if it did).  So the easiest path is to
> use a different name; alternatively for graph rewriting you could use
> the various APIs to effect package transformations.

Would be nice to have some way to specify channel in a package
specification.  I don't think that it would break things if we
considerer channels as namespaces, i.e. different graph.  A
specification like:

  {channel}package@version:output

would be useful.  For now I will just rename them to "my/package".

Regards,
old

-- 
Olivier Dion
oldiob.dev