Hi, I am trying to send a NAR archive to Fred. We are facing a few issues. First I created the archive
env GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH=../guix-bioinformatics/ ./pre-inst-env guix archive --export -r --no-grafts genenetwork2 > gn2.nar and Fred installed the key and unpacked it. Unfortunately it does not contain package dependencies, such as mysql: https://gitlab.com/genenetwork/guix-bioinformatics/blob/master/gn/packages/genenetwork.scm#L194 somehow propagated-inputs don't go into the archive. You'd think they are critical dependencies. Q1: is that to be expected? NAR files are signed. I think it would be very useful to be able to distribute unsigned NAR files. Q2: can signing/checking be made optional? I can't view the contents. Q3: how do we view the contents of a NAR file without unpacking it? and Q4: is there a nice way to include a profile path in the store that can be used quickly? The alternative is tarballing an environment/container, but the problem there is that Fred's Guix daemon won't be aware of the new packages. We want to avoid using Docker. Q5: is there an elegant way to add those unpacked store items to the database? Thanks! I tried using NAR Files before and gave up. I hope it is clear why. Pj.
