Subject: bug#34531: Guix profile fails on Overdrive 1000

From: Andreas Enge <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:35:53 +0100

On Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 02:23:23PM +0100, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> Guix pull needs “guile-git”, and “guile-git” needs “libgit2”, which
> needs “python-wrapper”.  To remove the need for Python in “guix pull” we
> would need to build libgit2 without Python.  I don’t know if anyone has
> investigated whether this can be done.

I tried to simply drop python-wrapper from inputs. Actually it is not
referenced by the final output, so it should be in native-inputs. And
here is what happens:

-- Could NOT find PythonInterp (missing: PYTHON_EXECUTABLE)
CMake Error at tests/CMakeLists.txt:4 (MESSAGE):
  Could not find a python interpeter, which is needed to build the tests.
  Make sure python is available, or pass -DBUILD_CLAR=OFF to skip building
  the tests

So we could create a separate package for internal guix use without running
the tests, which would save us from compiling and especially testing python.

Although this is not our usual style - but on the other hand, "guix pull"
is more or less the first command that we recommend to our users, and
it would be nice if it ran fast without requiring (many) additional packages.

Ironically, libgit2 advertises itself as needing "Zero Dependencies" on its
web site...

What do you think?

Andreas