Today I had a go at writing a dummy python library, and packaging it, and then installing it within an environment, with the aim of experimenting more with how Guix works, and to explore how Guix can be used as a developer (with unpublished local packages).
There were several slight issues with this, but I got some help on IRC to work around these. The first, is that the hash is required, which I only had to compute once, but if I wanted to change the package, I would have to update this, which is prohibitive to local development. As an improvement to this, could the hash be optional, and if it does not exist, be calculated when the build is performed? The second issue was getting the data to the store, as first I tried a relative path, but that did not work, and ended up having to expose the repository using a HTTP server, and access it over the loopback interface. This again is rather prohibitive to local development. To improve on this, could guix build do the insertion in to the store, such that relative paths would work? This would allow just writing a "guix.scm" file, which just uses (git-reference (url "./") (commit "HEAD")). I'm not sure how this use case is perceived, but it seems to me that supporting supporting use of Guix locally would be helpful, both in terms of helping users just get things done, and supporting those who also wish to contribute to Guix. Any thoughts on this? I'm still learning about all of the Guix internals, so I'm not sure how feasible the changes I mention above are. Thanks, Chris
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