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

From: Konrad Hinsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2021 17:45:33 +0200

Hi Ludo and Liliana,

> To me it’s the same as ‘guix environment’, but with a slightly different
> command-line interface; ‘guix environment’ was already serves these two
> use cases.

Indeed, but the new proposal goes much further with supporting
interactive convenience, in particular via the controversial reading of
guix.scm and/or manifest.scm. That's a convenience I'd like to have
interactively, but not something I expect from an infrastructure tool
that ends up being used in lengthy shell script. For the latter, the
"Zen of Python wisdom" of "explicit is better than implicit" matters a
lot. On the command line, it makes life harder, in particular for bad
typists such as myself.

> Perhaps to avoid this trouble, guix shell could read a file that simply
> specifies which arguments to add one line at a time e.g.
>
>   ;; .guix-shell-rc
>   --manifest=manifest.scm

That's a nice idea, but again something I wouldn't want an
infrastructure tool to do. When I use "guix environment" or "guix shell"
in a script or workflow, I want whatever it does to be as independent as
possible from my machine or account, except when I explicitly say the
contrary.

Cheers,
  Konrad