Subject: Re: bug#22402: info guix pages

From: "Thompson, David" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2016 12:17:32 -0500

On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 4:34 AM, carl hansen <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> Yes, that is the case, there is no mystery, there is indeed a
>  /root/.guix-profile/share/info/guix.info
> and there is NOT a
> ~user/.guix-profile/share/info/guix.info
>
> However I consider that a bug. Here I am a user, using guix, and I expect
> "info guix" to work. Why would the user have to switch to root just to read
> this one info file? After installing guix,  I would expect guix.info to be
> in my defalt .guix-profile, or a least a notice of how to install
> guix.info. ( coping and linking I know how to do, that's not the problem.
> It's a question
> of creating a polished piece of software.) Would "guix package -i guix" do
> the right thing?
> That seems all wrong, would install stuff I already have.

I think you need to adjust your expectations.  You only have Guix
available *in the root user's profile*.  Each user has their own
package profile, so running 'guix package -i guix' as your regular
user is exactly what you want.  Why would you expect the system to
magically read the info pages out of root's profile?  It's not
installing stuff you already have because your user *didn't* have it.
So, install the Guix package and set $INFOPATH to include
$HOME/.guix-profile/share/info.

Ludo, to avoid this confusion in the future, perhaps the binary
installation instructions for folks on foreign distros could have an
additional instruction.  After symlinking root's guix to
/usr/local/bin/guix, the documentation could suggest  symlinking the
docs to /usr/local/share/info.  Would that help?

- Dave