Subject: [bug#37443] [PATCH] scripts: pull: Add options for generation management

From: Ricardo Wurmus <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2019 19:22:48 +0200

zimoun <[email-masked]> writes:

> Coming from Conda package manager, it took me some time to understand;
> because the Guix terminology was not what I was expecting from the
> Conda terminology (in conda "guix environment" does not exist, and
> "guix profile" is called environment).
>
> Profile as persistent environment clarifies, IMHO.

Instead of providing a “guix profile” command, another option would be
to merge “guix package” and “guix environment” to just “guix
env[ironment]”.  We could finally get rid of “guix environment
--ad-hoc” while we’re at it :)

> Is it possible to list all my own profiles?

Not with a simple command, but Guix does keep links to profiles.  Take a
look here:

    /var/guix/gcroots/profiles/per-user/zimoun/

>> > And since I am in criticizing mood, the whole Guix management API
>> > suffers from bad naming. Consider "guix pull -l". What does it pull?  Or
>
> I agree that "guix pull" should be split into:
>  - "guix pull" which actually pulls and builds derivations
>  - "guix log" which lists, switches or deletes the pull generation
>
> For example "guix log --news" seems better than "guix pull --news".

I’m not convinced this would actually be an improvement.  We need to
avoid sub-command inflation.

--
Ricardo