Subject: [bug#36162] [PATCH 0/4] Add 'remote-eval'

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2019 15:52:10 +0200

Hello,

[email-masked] (Jakob L. Kreuze) skribis:

> One idea I had in developing my test suite was to design another record
> type to supplement '<system-test>' for tests that /do/ need access the
> host's store as they're running, but thought it would be too intrusive
> as it would only be used by the tests for '(gnu machine)'. Now that we
> have a ‘remote-eval’ that would benefit from being tested that way,
> though, I'd like to ask: is that something I should look into?

Tests are supposed to be deterministic, so as such, it makes sense for
tests to be normal derivations, as is currently the case.

In that spirit, we should instead tweak <virtual-machine> so that we can
instruct it to build an autonomous VM with its own store.

OTOH, we could also have ‘container-eval’, similar to ‘remote-eval’,
which would be useful for effectful code, such as code that needs to
interact with the daemon.  Food for thought!

Thanks,
Ludo’.