Subject: bug#78152: [guix-daemon] Build user's pw_dir != HOME

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 May 2025 10:54:26 +0200

Hello,

Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]> writes:

>> (Note that the unprivileged daemon does introduce some discrepancies,
>> and this is something we should fix as much as possible.)
>
> Hm, perhaps if the 'as much as possible' != 'everything', we could use
> this breaking opportunity to bundle a few changes like this one?

I would rather not (especially since this particular issue hasn’t been a
problem until now, and for only one package).  But overall it’s tricky:
some discrepancies are unavoidable.  So the real question is how likely
it is that package build systems and test suites will behave differently
because of these discrepancies, and often it’s really hard to tell
upfront.

> A way that could perhaps be used here would be to bump the daemon's
> version, and expose this to the build so that some phases code can be
> conditional to the daemon version.  Not very elegant, but it'd at least
> allow us fixing this kind of issue in the daemon.

I would prefer not to as this goes against the model where we assume the
build environment to be set in stone.

But I don’t know, we’ll have to think through it.

Thanks,
Ludo’.