On Mon 20 Mar 2017 15:14, l...@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes: > Federico Beffa <be...@ieee.org> skribis: > >> If you provide an archive such as >> 'guile-2.2.0-pack-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.lz' reachable from the main >> project page (especially without any warning about its intended >> purpose), I bet that many peoples will install it and keep it. If more >> projects follow this example, we land to the above scenario where "rm >> -rf /gnu" is not practical at all.
Replying to Federico: These are the same considerations as with Guix fwiw, unless you remove old profiles and "guix gc". Another solution to this concern is to remove /gnu/store and re-unpack the tarballs that you still want. Generally though I think we shouldn't expect people to access the store directly; they'd only use /opt/gnu or whatever. In the case that you have upgraded the software, surely the problem is fixed (though of course you may fix the problem for pack A but not pack B). The natural solution is to use a package manager of course, as you note :) > I agree, there’s always a risk. I think what we can do is communicate > about these risks, and avoid using distributing packs in situations that > make it too likely that people will keep the pack without ever > upgrading. Agreed, though I wouldn't over-stress the risks to be honest -- Guix gives both users and distributors the ability to generate a new pack easily. A user can decide not to upgrade even in a system that is managed by Guix. User freedom is all of this :) Andy
