Subject: Re: bug#72135: Debian ‘guix’ package lacks zstd support

From: Simon Tournier <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2024 12:23:18 +0200

Hi,

On Thu, 18 Jul 2024 at 09:21, Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> wrote:

>> That said, after “apt install guix”, does the guix-daemon update work?
>> Somehow if “guix pull” as root fails after a fresh install via APT, then
>> it’s a bug on Guix side, else it’s a bug on Debian side tracked by
>> 1072918. :-)
>
> Upgrading guix-daemon when it was originally installed with apt is
> tricky: you need to modify /etc/systemd/system/guix-daemon.service so
> that it refers to the one in /var/guix/….  So I think few people upgrade
> the daemon on Debian.

Indeed.  Even, let note that the default configuration provided by Guix
seems patched by Debian [1].

So yeah the only way is to modify
/etc/systemd/system/guix-daemon.service  and restart the service.

> I’m not sure how to improve on that; we could document it under
> “Upgrading Guix” at least.

Well, yes the documentation on our side is a good start. :-)

Then, I do not know either how to improve on that.  I mean a typical
Debian cycle is 3-5 years for a release – oldstable Debian (Bulleye)
provides guix-daemon version 1.2.0 – then it would mean we must support
backward compatibility for substitutes to this all range; as Vagrant
warned in [2]. :-)

Well, patches could be accepted for fixing security in guix-daemon but I
am not convinced patches for some new/deprecated features would be
accepted.

Maybe we could provide some patches for oldstable Debian that modify
guix-daemon.service and friends.  Vagrant wrote [3]:

        It is of course possible to configure to use an updated guix-daemon from
        a user's profile (e.g. as recommended with guix-binary installation on a
        foreign distro), but out-of-the-box it uses the guix-daemon shipped in
        the package, which, at least with my Debian hat on, is how it should be.

So I do not know what would be the best here. :-)

Cheers,
simon

1: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/guix/-/blob/b1d0628cbedea22f175a463f4c4935d02601bf93/debian/patches/guix-services-from-usr-bin

2: Re: Are gzip-compressed substitutes still used?
Vagrant Cascadian <[email-masked]>
Wed, 17 Mar 2021 11:08:38 -0700
id:87o8fhwt3t.fsf@yucca
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2021-03
https://yhetil.org/guix/87o8fhwt3t.fsf@yucca

3: Re: Are gzip-compressed substitutes still used?
Vagrant Cascadian <[email-masked]>
Thu, 18 Mar 2021 09:00:20 -0700
id:87eegcwiy3.fsf@yucca
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2021-03
https://yhetil.org/guix/87eegcwiy3.fsf@yucca