Re: "guix system reconfigure" downloads 2G of stuff it doesn't need

[Leo Famulari]

On Mon, Jul 29, 2024 at 10:31:35AM -0400, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> Why does it need to download all of this stuff that I know it doesn't
> actually need (given that "guix gc" deleted it)?  In particular it appears
> to be downloading build dependencies for everything whether or not it
> is going to use a substitute for them, and also packages that I have
> intentionally excluded from the system configuration.

Very generally, these programs are considered necessary to build the
system generation itself.

I'm not claiming that each of these programs is executed in the process
of building the generation, but they are considered by Guix to be
required, either directly or transitively, in order to perform this
work.