Re: On DSLs

[zimoun]

Hi Konrad,

On Tue, 3 Dec 2019 at 11:29, Konrad Hinsen <address@hidden> wrote:

> > IOW, I think you can have a declarative _style_ in a full-blown
> > language, like:
>
> Definitely, and that's what I am aiming for. There remains the security
> issue of malevolent power users sneaking in innocuous-looking
> non-declarative code that non-expert users might run without suspicion.
> But I'd say we can make a lot of progress by having declarative style
> for all routine configuration data.

I am sure you are not talking about parenthesis-style, but if you need
an example of DSL based on Guix with YAML-flavour, give a look at
these examples [1].

[1] https://guixwl.org/beyond-started


>From my perspective, I find hard:

 - to know which function does what
 - where this function is located (module to import)
 - and sometimes this function is not exported, so I need to tweak
Guix, recompile, not-friendly time.

For example, I have in mind ‘package-environment-inputs’.

It will help to list what the features the manifest file should
contain. I mean, except the example [2] providing 'packages->manifest'
or 'specifications->manifest' or the other one in Inferiors [3] using
a specific commit, then it is a bit sparse.


[2] 
http://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-package.html#profile_002dmanifest
[3] http://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Inferiors.html#Inferiors



All the best,
simon