Re: Updates on the guix home manager

[Thorsten Wilms]

On Thu, 19 Sep 2019 23:22:57 +0200
Julien Lepiller <address@hidden> wrote:

> I you have a color-theme-home-type that extends all terminals, color
> themes would be configured in all terminals, but because of the
> extension, a mate-terminal-home-type would be instantiated.
> 
> My version of services introduce the notion of an extension point: all
> three terminal services would implement a color-theme extension point
> that could be targeted by another service. When it targets an
> extension point, a service does not need to specify what service is
> extended. In that case, no service is implicitely instantiated, and
> any service with that extension point is extended. This is exactly
> what we want to do here: by using the extension point, without
> specifying a target service, both gnome and xfce4 terminal
> configurations are updated with your color theme, and
> mate-terminal-home-type is not instantiated.

OK, let me try to put that in different terms:
An application-configuration may contain placeholders. A
generalized-configuration may declare that it fills in a specific
placeholder. This happens automatically, if the
generalized-configuration is used, while any
application-configuration with such a placeholder is also in use.

So basically like having an inherits-from, but with one level of
abstraction that allows to swap in the thing to inherit from?


So far, in my own practice, what I have been missing is a way to manage
defaults and customizations. I'd like to keep track of it, in terms of
"these are the defaults the application has been installed with",
"these are the changes I applied". Then, when an update of the
application does anything to the defaults, I want to be able to get to
a diff and the option to apply my changes as a patch, or see where
conflicts are.

Adding a mechanism to generalize settings, I can only imagine a graph,
consisting of generalized-settings-producers, translators, patches and
combiners. Actually, generalized-settings-producers could be patches
(from nothing to something).


-- 
Thorsten Wilms <address@hidden>