Subject: Re: bug#41709: installed-os test failing

From: Mathieu Othacehe <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2020 17:40:48 +0200

Hey,

> Let’s just set the ‘locale-libcs’ field in (gnu tests) so that it
> contains a single libc.  WDYT?

I'll see first if I can get the closure smaller by other means. I think
it would be preferable to keep the tested operating-system as close as
possible to the default one.

>> * "openssh" is dragging "xauth" which drags some X libraries (but this
>> does not account for much).
>
> Yes, but that’s necessary for “ssh -X”, so I think we consciously made
> that choice long ago.

Ok, I proposed a work around by introducing openssh-sans-x.

>> * "sudo" is dragging "python" for about 100MiB.
>
> Comes from the Python plugin added in
> 452244e670467afe0e8ccdfb9ca2980d5a3b4694.  No idea what it buys us.

Some python bindings to sudo API, but I moved them to a separate
"python" output.

>
>> * "info-reader" is dragging "perl" (and is in fact the same size as
>> "texinfo" because of a mistake that I introduced with
>> 614a1e3fa2d731d4719f03912b1b87fb4fd309cb) for about 100MiB.
>
> Ah would be nice to fix and add a #:disallowed-references flag there!

In fact there were a #:disallowed-references already, but its argument
was also wrong so it went unnoticed. I fixed all of that on core-updates
branch.

>
>> * The switch to non-canonical version of "glibc" and "coreutils" to fix
>> system cross-compilation in dfc8ccbf5da96a67eb1cade499f0def21e7fdb02 is
>> also responsible for about 100MiB.
>
> Yeah, that’s the price to pay.  :-/

I'd like to re-introduce "canonical-packages", without breaking the
system cross-compilation, by using "let-system". See:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2020-06/msg00093.html.

>> Now, the big source of improvement could be Guix itself (278MiB without
>> dependencies).
>
> Yep, see my recent message on this topic.  :-)

Yes, thanks for your first analysis :)

Thanks,

Mathieu