Subject: [bug#42225] [PATCH 0/5] Add 'guix git-authenticate' command

From: zimoun <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2020 23:27:24 +0200

Hi,

On Mon, 06 Jul 2020 at 21:48, Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> wrote:

> We’re drifting off-topic, but this is interesting.  I just hope few
> people do that, but at least it’s a reminder of the sad situation
> wrt. substitute availability.

I have started to do so during lockdown.  I was in South of France
(Millau \o/) only with my laptop which is not so much powerful.

Well, on one hand it is the availability of package substitutes; but
except some corner case and bad luck, in general* it is fine for me.  On
the other hand, I am really annoyed by building the derivations.  But
the new Guile compiler for derivation and other such optimizations could
really improve the situation. :-)

*general: well, it should not be possible to pull packages that do not
 build.  It is rare but it happens and it is really frustrating: burn
 CPU and finally end with "build error".  Anyway!  Off-topic.

> I don’t understand why you wouldn’t run ‘guix pull --news’ though.  It
> provides useful info beyond packages, doesn’t it?

The command "guix pull --news" is useful.  It provides useful
information about packages, features, etc.  But I read "--news" directly
on guix-patches. :-)

However, "guix pull --news" is not useful for what I want: find the
commit backward in order to feed "guix time-machine --commit=".  From my
point of view, "--news" is useful forward.  Other said, I delete the old
generations I pulled e.g. 1 year ago so "--news" cannot work in this
case.  Anyway!  Another off-topic.

>>> In the short term, we don’t need to solve all these problems: we can
>>> also go for ‘git-authenticate’ and rename it once we have these other
>>> commands.
>>
>> I have learnt that renaming will not work. :-)
>> Because backward compatibilities and break the workflow of someone.
>> So I would take the other route, go for "guix git authenticate" and
>> hoping that other commands would come soon.
>
> Well, this particular renaming would be easy: it’s really just renaming,
> with a known name, a situation very different from that of ‘guix
> environment’ if that’s what you were alluding to.

Well, I do not think that particular renaming would be easy; as any
other renaming: changing established things is hard.  It is easy to add,
not to remove.  And from my point of view "guix git-authenticate" is not
special enough to deserve a subcommand.  But we all enjoy different
taste of wine. :-)

Anyway.  Because we are drifting too much, let open another discussion
and move forward this one.  So, it was my bikeshedding feedback. :-)

Cheers,
simon