Subject: Re: [bug#75981] [PATCH (WIP) v1.5 1/4] Add 'guix fork create'.

From: Simon Streit <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2025 23:24:46 +0100

Hello Maxim,

Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]> writes:

> My first thought was similar to Liliana’s reply in the other issue
> thread: putting lots of energy into making it convenient to fork Guix
> instead of contributing to the review process (described as slow and
> erratic, which appears to be the motivation here), appears
> counter-productive.

I am all for contributing to the review process.  It is only through
recent discussions on this subject that I am forcing myself to be a bit
more active within the community again.  Thanks for getting me back in.
I am also at fault my self.  I have a personal channel running and the
list is getting longer on patches that rather be submitted.

I am nowhere close to be a contributor (yet).  I simply don’t have time
and resources to be more active at the moment.  At the same time I also
don’t want to wait for months until certain patches – which have been
submitted for review – are pushed upstream.

I do keep patches running on top of local branches that are constantly
being re-based from upstream.  While time consuming, it seems to be the
most convenient at the moment.

I don’t even want maintain a local fork.  It is not that I really need
one.  I use it for development, thus many branches are just dead ends
that are kept for archival reasons.  I have a local central repository
where I usually push my work to be more independent from my devices –
which is my issue.  And here I only recently realised that I can’t even
push these branches to my central repository any more.

Then I tried it the other day to set up a modified keyring and
authenticate with my key and push it to my local repository as described
in the manual.  I failed for some reason and probably missed something.
This time I felt it: The bar is now seriously high to work on Guix at
the moment.

While the authentication mechanism is useful and necessary to prove what
is from Guix, it defeats the point to use Git as a decentralised tool.
It should be possible to allow local modifications for personal use,
also as unauthorised contributors.

I am for it.  Including a warning that I am pulling an unauthenticated
fork.

Kind regards

-- 
Simon