Subject: Re: [bug#30256] [PATCH 3/3] scripts: environment: Add --no-cwd.

From: [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès)
Date: Sun, 04 Mar 2018 23:24:27 +0100

Heya,

Mike Gerwitz <[email-masked]> skribis:

> On Sat, Mar 03, 2018 at 15:44:43 +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:

[...]

>> Sure.  I think the issue of least-authority execution of programs
>> remains open anway.  Do we want a ‘guix run’-like command?  Something in
>> the shell, but which shell(s) then?  Automatically-generated wrappers so
>> we don’t depend on specific shells?
>
> One thing in particular about using `guix environment --ad-hoc' that is
> particularly unfortunate with how I'm abusing it is that it will build
> new derivations as necessary (as it is supposed to).  So "starting
> icecat" in a container isn't just that.  I recently upgraded Guix, and
> icecat isn't available on Hydra yet, so I'm unable to start icecat at
> all until it compiles, which is hours on an X200 (though I'm assuming
> that reverting ~/.config/guix/latest might allow me to work around it
> temporarily with an old version).  This would not have been a problem
> with a normal icecat installation in my profile.

Right.  The ‘guix run’ script I sent doesn’t try to build things; it
just takes whatever is in $PATH (which has to be in the store,
ultimately) and runs it.

> Obviously the desirable behavior is to just containerize whatever is in
> your profile, if possible.  Maybe the script you sent me does just
> that.  I'm excited to play around with it, I just can't atm. :(

You still have to explicitly run ‘guix run icecat’, which isn’t great:
if you’re using GNOME Shell and clicking on the icon, you don’t get to
run it in a containerized environment.

Ludo’.