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01/02: website: drafts: Revise post on the Guix Data Service.
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From: |
Christopher Baines |
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Subject: |
01/02: website: drafts: Revise post on the Guix Data Service. |
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Date: |
Sun, 8 Nov 2020 15:43:19 -0500 (EST) |
cbaines pushed a commit to branch master
in repository guix-artwork.
commit 95818cb52a792872507022b6d85895563d0eb4c5
Author: Christopher Baines <mail@cbaines.net>
AuthorDate: Sun Nov 8 20:29:15 2020 +0000
website: drafts: Revise post on the Guix Data Service.
* website/drafts/guix-data-service-missing-blog-post.md: Update draft
with some revisions.
---
.../drafts/guix-data-service-missing-blog-post.md | 73 ++++++++++++++++------
1 file changed, 54 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-)
diff --git a/website/drafts/guix-data-service-missing-blog-post.md
b/website/drafts/guix-data-service-missing-blog-post.md
index 51a66d3..2eb6c4a 100644
--- a/website/drafts/guix-data-service-missing-blog-post.md
+++ b/website/drafts/guix-data-service-missing-blog-post.md
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
title: Introduction to the Guix Data Service, the missing blog post
-date: 2020-11-01 12:00
+date: 2020-11-08 20:30
author: Christopher Baines
tags: Guix Data Service, Reproducible builds, Continuous integration
---
@@ -13,14 +13,14 @@ related Outreachy project][outreachy-blog-post], this is
the first
blog post covering what is it and why it exists.
[data-service.git]: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/data-service.git/
-[README]: http://data.guix.gnu.org/README
+[README]: https://data.guix.gnu.org/README
[announcement]:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-02/msg00089.html
-[outreachy-blog-post]:
/en/blog/2020/improve-internationalization-support-for-the-guix-data-service/
+[outreachy-blog-post]:
https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/improve-internationalization-support-for-the-guix-data-service/
# Why?
The initial motivation came from trying to automate aspects of
-reviewing patches for Guix. If you have some patches for Guix, oneq
+reviewing patches for Guix. If you have some patches for Guix, one
aspect of review might be to apply the patches and then build the
affected patches. How do you know what packages are affected though?
@@ -28,7 +28,10 @@ You could try and guess based on the content of the patches,
and this
could work some of the time, but because Guix packages relate to one
another, changing one package may cause dependent packages to change.
Additionally, there are places in Guix where small changes could
-affect a large number of packages, build systems for example.
+affect a large number of packages, build systems for example. The
+`guix refresh -l` command is really helpful when testing packages
+locally, but it can in some cases miss some packages that are effected
+by changes, as it only explores the package graph.
The approach taken to working out what packages are affected by a set
of patches, was to record information about all the packages in the
@@ -40,6 +43,8 @@ beyond finding out what packages are affected, and includes
things
like looking at changes to lint warnings, channel news entries, and
more.
+[](https://data.guix.gnu.org/compare?base_commit=f503cfc9c51ea4ddd6cc9c027f1897e7866e411e&target_commit=f161bd2cd7af6a0a7027a2e4ed97912027d5033d)
+
This approach of storing information about revisions has applications
beyond reviewing patches, which is another reason why this approach
was taken. While the Guix Data Service doesn't bring new knowledge to
@@ -55,19 +60,18 @@ because the Guix Data Service can store the available
package names
and versions in a range of revisions, it can provide this information
more quickly and with less effort.
+[](https://data.guix.gnu.org/repository/1/branch/master/package/emacs)
+
Now, questions about package versions is something a user of Guix
might have. However, so far I haven't seen the Guix Data Service as
something that users of Guix should necessarily use or be aware of.
Instead, I think it has a place to provide information to enable
things that users of Guix would directly use.
-I don't think there's a great example of something building on the
-Guix Data Service, but there are a few in varying states of
-development.
-
-I've been attempting to automate parts of a [weekly news publication
-about Guix][weekly-news] through using the Guix Data Service, I've
-also been writing a [service for building
+There are a few applications of data from the Guix Data Service in
+varying states of development. I've been attempting to automate parts
+of a [weekly news publication about Guix][weekly-news] through using
+the Guix Data Service, I've also been writing a [service for building
derivations][guix-build-coordinator], which I've been using in
conjunction with the Guix Data Service to provide substitutes. As
part of an Outreachy internship on improving internationalisation
@@ -75,6 +79,8 @@ support in the Guix Data Service, Danjela worked on creating
a package
search page for the Guix website, which wrapped the package search
functionality in the Guix Data Service.
+[](https://prototype-guix-weekly-news.cbaines.net/)
+
[weekly-news]: https://git.cbaines.net/guix/weekly-news/
[guix-build-coordinator]: https://git.cbaines.net/guix/build-coordinator/
@@ -85,11 +91,13 @@ up data about which packages in Guix don't build
reproducibly.
Hopefully the Guix Data Service is well positioned to help with
technical questions like this.
+[](https://data.guix-patches.cbaines.net/repository/2/branch/master/latest-processed-revision/package-reproducibility)
+
# Architecture
The Guix Data Service is written in Guile, and uses PostgreSQL for the
-database. There's plenty of SQL queries, including some quite long
-ones in the code as well.
+database. There's plenty of SQL queries in the code, including some
+quite long ones.
There are several scripts which act as entry points to different parts
of the Guile codebase:
@@ -108,6 +116,11 @@ backing up the database, generating a minimal database
which is
hopefully small in size and querying build/substitute servers for
information.
+When running on a Guix system, there's a [service to help with
+deployment][guix-manual-guix-data-service].
+
+[guix-manual-guix-data-service]:
https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Guix-Services.html#Guix-Data-Service
+
# Getting information in
Rather than polling the Git repository to find out about new
@@ -146,11 +159,14 @@ a long process to extract information about that revision
of Guix, and
store it in the database.
The first part of this is to actually fetch and build the relevant
-revision. The Guix Data Service uses channels, the same code used by
-`guix pull` and `guix time-machine`, in conjunction with the `(guix
-inferior)` module for communication with another revision of Guix.
-It's through the inferior REPL that information from the target
-revision is extracted.
+revision. The Guix Data Service uses [channels][guix-manual-channels]
+and [inferiors][guix-manual-inferiors], the same code used by `guix
+pull` and `guix time-machine` for communication with another revision
+of Guix. It's through the inferior REPL that information from the
+target revision is extracted.
+
+[guix-manual-channels]:
https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Channels.html
+[guix-manual-inferiors]:
https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Inferiors.html
In addition to receiving information about new revisions, the Guix
Data Service can accept POST requests to receive information about
@@ -242,3 +258,22 @@ last two years, I've linked to most of these below:
- [2019/05/06 - Linting, and how to get the information in to the Guix Data
Serivce](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-05/msg00127.html)
- [2019/04/04 - Progress with the Guix Data
Service](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-04/msg00094.html)
- [2019/02/08 - Tracking and inspecting how Guix changes over
time](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-02/msg00089.html)
+
+#### About GNU Guix
+
+[GNU Guix](https://www.gnu.org/software/guix) is a transactional package
+manager and an advanced distribution of the GNU system that [respects
+user
+freedom](https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html).
+Guix can be used on top of any system running the Hurd or the Linux
+kernel, or it can be used as a standalone operating system distribution
+for i686, x86_64, ARMv7, and AArch64 machines.
+
+In addition to standard package management features, Guix supports
+transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management,
+per-user profiles, and garbage collection. When used as a standalone
+GNU/Linux distribution, Guix offers a declarative, stateless approach to
+operating system configuration management. Guix is highly customizable
+and hackable through [Guile](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile)
+programming interfaces and extensions to the
+[Scheme](http://schemers.org) language.