Bug 637392 – several remarks and pieces of advise on the sys-apps/guix ebuild

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description ng0 2017-11-13 19:58:31 UTC]

First things first: Guix 0.12 should be dropped.
In general I advise you as a long-time contributor to Guix, that ebuild versions should follow the release of Guix and drop the older versions. As soon as you move this from 'T' to 'unstable' or 'stable', you should mark the version as stable that has been released.
If you don't do this, we will have people (coming from your side) complaining about various things that have been declared as fixed in the newer releases (and commits). If you do understand how Guix works, it would help for better cooperation to follow current releases.
0.13 is the current release.
It is true that we keep old release around on the GNU ftp for consistency, but the release is just a snapshot and an 'entry point' to the otherwise rolling release model.
People who will install 0.13 will no longer have 0.13 the moment they update (guix pull) the distribution contained within Guix.

Furthermore, we welcome patches. If you have any patches that are not upstream commits (I've counted 2 upstream commits), feel invited to send them our way so that we can discuss inclusion of them.

If anything of the above needs clarification (after consulting the Manual), feel free to ask aswell.

Regards,
ng0

[Comment 1 Sergei Trofimovich (RETIRED) 2017-12-03 15:39:31 UTC]

Sorry, I somehow missed the notification of thus bug report.

(In reply to ng0 from comment #0)
> First things first: Guix 0.12 should be dropped.

Why? Is there any known breakage there? I had zero guix-related bugs for
quite a while.

> If you don't do this, we will have people (coming from your side)
> complaining about various things that have been declared as fixed in the
> newer releases (and commits).

I believe it is generally solved by releasing a new version of something
that works and not by pulling from master, staging or core-updates. Even
if 'guix pull' is preferred workflow for development it's not how people
get their first guix install on their systems.

> People who will install 0.13 will no longer have 0.13 the moment they update
> (guix pull) the distribution contained within Guix.

0. People will get 0.13 every time they do 'emerge guix' on a fresh Gentoo system.
1. In order to get rid of 0.13 'guix' pull needs to succeed. Oftentimes it does not
   work due to fast-moving nature of guix.
2. People don't have to perform 'guix pull' right after the installation.

It's especially relevant for current situation because 'guix pull' on top of vanilla
0.13.0 just does not work:
    $ guix pull
    Your installation is too old and lacks a 'guile2.0-git' package.
    Please upgrade to an intermediate version first, for instance with:
    guix pull --url=https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/snapshot/v0.13.0.tar.gz

    $ guix pull --url=https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/snapshot/v0.13.0.tar.gz
    ...
    compiling...      0.0% oException thrown while printing backtrace:
    ERROR: 593 files: Module named (system vm frame) does not exist

    copying and compiling to '/gnu/store/gndnymqivwrlfkb0wf7zk184yzlp7bl3-guix-latest' with Guile 2.0.14...
    loading...       24.8% of 593 filesrandom seed for tests: 1512315044
    loading...       99.8% of 593 files
    compiling...      0.0% of 593Backtrace:
    In ice-9/boot-9.scm:
    compiling...      0.0% oException thrown while printing backtrace:
    ERROR: 593 files: Module named (system vm frame) does not exist

    compiling....scm  0.0% of #<program f647b80>:
     filesice-9/boot-9.scm:109:20: no such language tree-il
    coming...         0.0% of 593 filesbuilder for `/gnu/store/a543jvz4mhg40n34gkyspr4hamnnsn6l-guix-latest.drv' failed with exit code 1
    guix pull: error: build failed: build of `/gnu/store/a543jvz4mhg40n34gkyspr4hamnnsn6l-guix-latest.drv' failed

I'd say that's when you know you need to release a new version.

Moreover even when 'guix pull' succeeds there is some things like guix-daemon
running from binary before 'guix pull' was done most recently.

Did you have any bug reports in guix upstream that ought to be dealt with
on Gentoo side instead of being addressed in guix directly? You should
direct such reports to Gentoo's bugzilla if you have problems with that.

> Furthermore, we welcome patches. If you have any patches that are not
> upstream commits (I've counted 2 upstream commits), feel invited to send
> them our way so that we can discuss inclusion of them.

Thanks for the offer. Gentoo has no major outstanding patches against guix-0.13.0.

[Comment 2 Sergei Trofimovich (RETIRED) 2018-01-20 11:30:10 UTC]

> (In reply to ng0 from comment #0)
> > First things first: Guix 0.12 should be dropped.

I think it's the only actionable item here. 0.12.0 was dropped in https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=74965e517c86745900b1b43d515a112aca75a8c6

Thanks for the report!