Re: Store channel specification in profile

[zimoun]

Hi Pierre,

On Mon, 9 Dec 2019 at 18:22, Pierre Neidhardt <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > This is exactly what’s currently implemented if you look at
> > ~/.guix-profile/manifest, under ‘provenance’.
>
> But does "provenance" tell about the channels?

Yes, I think so.

For example,  ~/.guix-profile/manifest looks like that:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
("diffoscope"
      "131"
      "out"
      "/gnu/store/h8zr4rxhvpikv9p07kdjkf2dsrja35wm-diffoscope-131"
      (propagated-inputs ())
      (search-paths ())
      (properties
        (provenance
          (repository
            (version 0)
            (url "https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git";)
            (branch "master")
            (commit
              "b5d4d5b9bcf267fddd02fcc14b88eac0bebf979f")))))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---



> > Like zimoun writes, it would be nice to have some sort of a “describe”
> > command for a regular profile.  Actually maybe “guix describe -p”?
> >
> > Actually ‘guix describe -p ~/.guix-profile’ works but doesn’t display
> > anything useful.  We could fix that by recognizing the kind of profile,
> > somehow.
>
> Seems like a good idea.  How do we define "anything useful" though?
> The provenance of packages?  How would we format it?

As I explained elsewhere, the file <your-profile>/manifest already
contains almost all the information we need (at least I think we need
;-)). But its format is not complaint with the other format (channels,
manifest). And you answered: it is plumbing! :-)
My point is: this plumbing manifest file should be more
"format-friendly" -- still being plumbing -- and easily compliant with
the --channel or --manifest option, IMHO.


Cheers,
simon