Re: WIP Guix Cookbook

[Ludovic Courtès]

Howdy!

Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> skribis:

> attached is a WIP patch for a Guix Cookbook, a document that is intended
> to include articles, tutorials, and annotated examples with links to the
> reference manual.  The idea is that the reference manual shouldn’t be
> bloated with examples and tutorials, but we’d also like to ensure high
> quality control and a document that can easily be adjusted to match the
> changing APIs.

That’s a great initiative!  Lots of people will surely appreciate it.

> This initial draft includes parts of Pierre’s packaging tutorial and
> Efraim’s article on customizing the kernel.  As I was preparing this I
> had some doubts about my choices.  The kernel article highlights
> problems with our API, which makes customizing the kernel somewhat
> awkward.  The packaging tutorial on the other hand is very large and
> includes a Scheme tutorial.  Maybe this should be moved to a separate
> section…?

I think it’s OK to have it here.  Well, it could also be in the Guile
manual, but that’s fine.

Other ideas that come to mind: we could easily expand the section on
packaging.  Lots of things aren’t quite documented, such as the (guix
build utils) tools, or the typical workflows, habits, etc. we’re used to
when packaging.  We could also turn into text the example from Chris
Marusich’s talk about hacking a package:
<https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2018/back-from-seagl-2018/>.

Another idea: perhaps something based on Chris’ article:
<https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2018/customize-guixsd-use-stock-ssh-agent-everywhere/>.

And something based on Jakob’s article:
<https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/towards-guix-for-devops/>.

There’s no shortage of material to reuse.  :-)

> Efraim’s original article uses the first person as the narrator voice,
> which is fine for a blog post, but maybe not appropriate for a
> collaborative document.  Should this be changed?

I would say it should be changed and kept consistent throughout, if
possible, but it’s no big deal.

What should be the next step in your opinion?  I think we could have it
in ‘master’ and published on-line quickly: it’s a living document, so
there’s really no reason to wait.

Thanks for doing this!

Ludo’.