Subject: bug#76402: ‘guix-packages-website’ fails to start

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2025 09:52:30 +0100

Hi Luis,

After confirming that the service works fine in ‘guix system vm’, I
figured this must be a state problem.

The solution turned out to be simple:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
ludo@bayfront ~$ sudo rm -rf /var/lib/guix-packages-website/.cache/guile/ccache
ludo@bayfront ~$ sudo herd restart guix-packages-website
Service guix-packages-website is not running.
Service user-homes has been started.
Service guix-packages-website has been started.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

👉 https://packages.guix.gnu.org/

IWBN to pre-compile everything instead of letting auto-compilation do
it, with this kind of problems coming up.

Apologies for the delay!

Ludo’.

PS: Instead of delegating each request to the Data Service, I think
    guix-packages-website should simply maintain a local database with
    all the relevant info, similar to what
    <https://git.sr.ht/~whereiseveryone/toys> does (a separate Shepherd
    service populates a sqlite database) or
    <https://github.com/UMCUGenetics/hpcguix-web> (all the data is kept
    in a JSON file periodically updated by time machine).