Subject: Re: bug#50960: [PATCH 00/10] Add 'guix shell' to subsume 'guix environment'

From: zimoun <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2021 15:42:03 +0200

On Mon, 4 Oct 2021 at 14:23, Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> wrote:
> zimoun <[email-masked]> skribis:

> > For sure, I agree «we owe our users stability».  That’s I translate into
> > «the real issue is to let people knowing such change». :-)
>
> No no.  The problem is that there *will* be material out there
> explaining Guix in terms of ‘guix environment’, people *will* stumble on
> it, and it’s important to keep it working long enough so people can
> update their material.

We are saying the same, no?

Except that for me "people" and "material" are vague so I propose to add
a section to deal with this vagueness at removal time (maybe 2023 or
2024?) explaining how to switch from "guix enviornment" to "guix shell".
Therefore, people will stumble on this not-updated material, then they
will be able to run it with "guix shell" using the proposed section.
One could image:

  $ guix enviornment <old> <example> <how> <to> -- <use> <it>
  error: environment had be removed by commit: xxxxx.
  hint: Try `guix time-machine --commit=yyyyy -- environment <old> <example> <how> <to> -- <use> <it>'
  Please read section "guix environment" in the manual.

where yyyy is that last commit right before the removal.  Or something
along this idea.

Well, we agree to speak about that when preparing v1.5 or v1.6 and we
are far from that. ;-)

Cheers,
simon