Subject: Re: bug#22629: Channels!

From: Alex Sassmannshausen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:29:50 +0200

Mark H Weaver writes:

> Hi Ludovic,
>
> [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>> Currently third-party channels are expected to provide nothing but
>> package modules.
>
> I'd like to say again that I have grave concerns that this could be the
> death-knell for long-term innovation in Guix.  It's likely that whenever
> a change is proposed that will break these third-party channels, there
> will be resistance, and efforts to preserve backward compatibility.

I understand your concerns and want to acknowledge those.

My primary interest in channels at the moment comes from believing that
having a "stable" channel would be incredibly useful to increase
adoption rate of Guix.  And for me.

Currently upgrading my system involves doing a guix pull, then, over the
course of a few days, doing guix package -u and bailing out if I start
building a large program.

After this I do guix system build, and bail out if a large program
starts building.

In either case, if an upgrade broke a dependency then I'm kind of stuck
at the old versions of my profile.

Finally, when I've upgrade profile and system, I immediately run guix
pull to prepare for the next cycle.

I consider myself pretty capable, and I find this process stressful — I
certainly cannot envisage most of my currently interested friends going
through this process…

But like I say, this is not to discount your concerns, it is merely to
add to the list of reasons why channels might be important.

Best wishes,

Alex

> Even things as seemingly innocuous as moving a package from one module
> to another will impact these third-party channels, not to mention
> changing our internal APIs or making fundamental changes to the way
> packages are specified.
>
> Part of why I'm so interested in Guix is because it currently has nearly
> unconstrained potential to grow into something far more beautiful and
> elegant than it is today.
>
> I fear that with the introduction of channels, that potential will be
> drastically curtailed, and that we're essentially trading our future
> potential for what will in practice, most likely, be primarily used to
> facilitate the use of non-free software on Guix.
>
> When I start to see signs of resistance to changes for the sake of
> third-party channels, then I'll know I was right to be fearful, and
> Guix will become far less interesting to me.
>
>        Mark