Subject: Re: Non-committers can't keep authenticated forks updated

From: Liliana Marie Prikler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2025 21:08:40 +0100

Am Donnerstag, dem 16.01.2025 um 15:39 +0100 schrieb Tomas Volf:
> Liliana Marie Prikler <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> > [..]
> > 
> > > Then there is anything modifying any of the guix commands. 
> > > #74832 is over month old, and as far as I know, I am not able to
> > > fix guix-copy from a channel.  #72928 took over a month to merge,
> > > and again, not sure how to patch guix-describe from a channel.
> > Have you considered extensions?
> 
> Took me a while to figure out what you mean.  Apparently there is a
> $GUIX_EXTENSIONS_PATH environment variables that can be used to add
> sub-commands (does not seem to be documented at all in the manual?).
> Maybe I am looking into wrong place.
Good point, we do lack documentation for that.  It was mentioned in a
blog post IIRC, but newcomers won't necessarily find that.

> If I understand it correctly, I could copy&paste the current code for
> `guix describe' and add it as `guix describe*' with my modification.
> However it feels bit convoluted.
In practice, you import the module and then add your changes on top
with the minimum amount of work possible.  E.g. for `guix describe*`,
you could first run `guix describe` and then print your own output
afterwards.

> All of these things discussed in this thread are technically
> possible.  But I think that we all agree that the friction involved,
> compared to just using my own fork with the patch applied, is much
> larger, at least in my opinion.
Yes, we can agree that this is your opinion.  We can even agree that
there is more friction, but I'm not sure whether we agree on the value
of "much".  But honestly speaking, the friction with contributing to
upstream is much more a social one (too few people to review) than a
technical one, and soft forks are a band aid that will likely burn you
out even sooner the more you commit to them.

Cheers