Subject: Re: bug#67707: Fresh installation leaks details about ISO build environment

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 May 2025 00:23:07 +0200

Hello,

Rutherther via Bug reports for GNU Guix <[email-masked]> writes:

> Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> writes:

[...]

>> Oh right, it’s probably best to change it there.  Something like this?
>
> Yes, that is exactly what I had in mind.

OK, pushed as 94c9e53fa4b45e85c1664a9bab6aea0d5c3ac123.

I checked in ‘guix system vm gnu/system/install.scm’ that ‘guix
describe’ reports the right URL.

> Btw I am wondering, is there a policy on (not) updating the released
> iso?

Release artifacts in general are immutable.  But of course, we should
make a new release, that’s consensual.  :-)

>> I’m not sure I follow: even if one uses a mirror of Savannah, downgrade
>> prevention works fine.  Or are you referring to some other motivation?
>
> I agree that the prevention works fine even with a mirror. What I wanted
> to say is that sometimes it can't work. Like if a repository hosting is
> down or you don't have internet connection. That is, if the checkout
> (usually the one of root) doesn't contain the commit. Lately, it shows
> because savannah is down very often. So one pulls successfully, but then
> can't reconfigure, because savannah is down again. This is because root
> has a separate checkout.

Oh right, got it.  Hopefully this particular issue will vanish if we
decide to move to Codeberg (GCD 002).

> Even if it didn't, if the checkouts are removed, the user can't
> reconfigure if repo hosting is down.  This just feels like an
> unnecessary limitation - why not allow the user to say: yes, this is a
> forward update, don't check, ie. --disable-forward-update-check.

I was going to say that it’s called ‘--allow-downgrades’, but in fact
no, because that still clones/pulls to perform the check and emit a
warning (instead of an error).  Still, maybe it could catch clone/pull
errors?

Anyway, that’s for another bug report. :-)

Thanks,
Ludo’.