Mark H Weaver writes:
> Hi Ludovic, > > l...@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes: >> Currently third-party channels are expected to provide nothing but >> package modules. > > I'd like to say again that I have grave concerns that this could be the > death-knell for long-term innovation in Guix. It's likely that whenever > a change is proposed that will break these third-party channels, there > will be resistance, and efforts to preserve backward compatibility. I understand your concerns and want to acknowledge those. My primary interest in channels at the moment comes from believing that having a "stable" channel would be incredibly useful to increase adoption rate of Guix. And for me. Currently upgrading my system involves doing a guix pull, then, over the course of a few days, doing guix package -u and bailing out if I start building a large program. After this I do guix system build, and bail out if a large program starts building. In either case, if an upgrade broke a dependency then I'm kind of stuck at the old versions of my profile. Finally, when I've upgrade profile and system, I immediately run guix pull to prepare for the next cycle. I consider myself pretty capable, and I find this process stressful — I certainly cannot envisage most of my currently interested friends going through this process… But like I say, this is not to discount your concerns, it is merely to add to the list of reasons why channels might be important. Best wishes, Alex > Even things as seemingly innocuous as moving a package from one module > to another will impact these third-party channels, not to mention > changing our internal APIs or making fundamental changes to the way > packages are specified. > > Part of why I'm so interested in Guix is because it currently has nearly > unconstrained potential to grow into something far more beautiful and > elegant than it is today. > > I fear that with the introduction of channels, that potential will be > drastically curtailed, and that we're essentially trading our future > potential for what will in practice, most likely, be primarily used to > facilitate the use of non-free software on Guix. > > When I start to see signs of resistance to changes for the sake of > third-party channels, then I'll know I was right to be fearful, and > Guix will become far less interesting to me. > > Mark
