Subject: Re: bug#46650: Extending package transformation options

From: zimoun <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2021 22:44:01 +0100

Hi,

On Wed, 24 Feb 2021 at 18:21, Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> wrote:

>> So here, a transformation could be applied.  For example, build all
>> the dependencies without testing them;  at the 'define gnutls' (&co)
>> step or in the map.  Why not?
>
> Sure, but how do you get a user-specified transformation to this line?

I do not know (yet?). :-)

First, we are only speaking about “guix time-machine” and second, only
about corner cases which could break in the future, as expiration.
Right?
We are not talking about general transformations applied to self (even
if it could be great).

So we could imagine something like ’set-build-from-command-line’ or
’set-build-option’ to tweak self only for the inferior.  I have not
traced (yet) on the stack of calls from “guix time-machine” to self via
the inferiors, but somehow it looks like passing arguments.

Well, be able to tweak how to build Guix via the time-machine appears to
me better than configuring a build machine ahead of time.  It is like
predicting the future and instead we should try to have a flexible
present in order to fix the past once in the unpredictable future. :-)

Cheers,
simon