Re: Proof of Concept: Import Emacs' use-packaged packages into Guix' manifest.scm

[Andrew Tropin]

On 2022-12-18 09:11, Liliana Marie Prikler wrote:

> Am Sonntag, dem 18.12.2022 um 01:54 +0000 schrieb Mekeor Melire:
>> Nevertheless, for me, personally, it's pretty neat and handy to 
>> use, because I don't need to maintain the list of emacs-packages 
>> in two places. I also think that it could come pretty handy for 
>> many others, at least in order to initialize their user-profile, 
>> by running something like ~guix package -e '(some-magic 
>> "/home/user/.emacs.d/init.el")'~.
> I think we should be able to build an Emacs service in Guix Home that
> can manage init.el.  As a workaround, use-package should also have a
> :when clause, so you can use :when (featurep 'some-package-autoloads)
> if you're unsure whether 'some-package is actually installed.  This
> makes your init file a little more resilient and is particularly useful
> with pure shells.
>
>> What do you think? Should this go into a separate, private 
>> channel? Into the Guix Cookbook? Into Guix, if so, then probably 
>> with lots of changes? Should it just stay here, in this mailing 
>> list thread? Or do you think this is just a bad idea in general?
> Given the caveats, I would rather like to see an Emacs Lisp based
> script that mocks use-package and generates a manifest by evaluting
> init.el.  This should give you more correct results.  It's not a bad
> idea per se, but as-is, I think it would better be maintained in your
> own channel before upstreaming.
>
> For upstreaming, I see two potential paths.  The first one would be
> integration to `guix home import', which Andrew Tropin (CC'd) could
> probably tell you more on.

I'm neither the author, nor the user of guix home import, however I
think it could be a good place for such a functionality, but I would
suggest to maintain this helper functions for a while in a personal
channel, mature it and revisit this question later.

To make a solution more robust and complete, you can take a look at
straight.el and how it redefines use-package-ensure-function and do
something similiar to generate a list of packages for guix.  Another
detail is that use-package accepts a symbol value for :ensure and you
can write something like:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
;; (setq use-package-always-ensure t) ; as an alternative to :ensure t
(use-package vertico
  :ensure t
  ...)

(use-package vertico-directory
  :ensure vertico
  ...)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

This way you won't need a concept of "blocked" packages.

One more idea: make a function which accepts file-like/origin object
instead of string and generates a package with propagated-dependencies
based on the content of source code provided as an argument.


Personally, with my emacs config I do the things vice versa: I have
elisp code in scheme files with a list of explicit dependencies:

https://git.sr.ht/~abcdw/rde/tree/b57387f2/src/rde/features/emacs-xyz.scm#L946

Nevertheless, your idea with use-package looks good to me.

> The second would be integration into `guix package' as a callable
> function/command line argument, but IMHO that's less likely to pass.
>
>
> Cheers

-- 
Best regards,
Andrew Tropin

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