Hi,
I was adding to guix fail2ban, greetd services with their
configurations
and pending configuration for connman. Basically the overall idea
behind
guix (i.e. having declarative configuration) is really nice.
Having such
mechanism powered by general purpose language like scheme is
another
very nice. In the ideal world, where all configurations are
provided and
ported to guix with included documentation whould be beautiful
from user
perspective.
However, we are not in an ideal world. From what I see, these
problems
araise from three main sources:
- Programs they selves. For instance if every program would follow
let's
say something like 12-factor app, then such programs would have
very
clear purpose, and thus clear configuration. One of such good
examples
in my practice would be greetd. Worst example would be fail2ban,
where
half of program logic is expressed in the configuration, very
ugly
very bad. Users have hard time to understand how it is
configured
in plain, porting such mechanism to another dsl, whole another
level
of pain. Rarely programs demand complex configuration, as some
one
noted, there is already a conventional mechanism to add
`extra-config`
field or having `plain-config-file-like` option saves the day.
- Porters of programs and services to guix. Such person should not
blindly port the configuration to the guix, but clearly
understand
how close or far away program from let's say 12-factor app (if
we
take it as reference). If very close, providing detailed strict
configuration records is a bliss. If very far, porter have to
think and add `extra-config` and `plain-config-file-like`
options.
- Users of guix have to understand, that what they write in scheme
for guix is not a configuration but a program. Once you trully
understand that, as a user you may change your behavior to have
configurations stored in the variables instead of inlining them
within service configuration. Then they can be used in service,
or manualy serialized to a file. Or even, one might write a
program
to traverse services and/or operating-system and to serialize
configuration on disk for LFS-like or systemd-like
compatibility.
IMHO, separating configuration (applications) from configuration
(guix
applications?) is not very wise way and will defeat very idea of
having single, programming language based declarative
configuration.
What we need is more tooling around configuration and
documentation,
for instance:
- tool to extract documentation from man pages
- tool to "copy-paste" configuration documentation into guix.texi
- tool to cross link packages, configuration documentations
- code completion with documentation hinting in writing guix
scheme
- etc.
Thanks in advance,
muradm
Sergey Trofimov <s...@sarg.org.ru> writes:
Hi guix,
I want to start a discussion around how to manage user app
config
files.
Copying my message from https://issues.guix.gnu.org/68010, where
home-zathura-configuration with 76 fields is proposed.
I have mixed feelings about pulling 3rd-party software
configurations
in guix:
- adding it to guix increases maintenance burden: new versions
could
add or remove config options
- it requires documentation/translation, another hidden cost
- it bloats guix: imagine if we add configs for every
user-configurable app
- such configs are not easily transferrable: if I were to use
the
same app in non-guix env, I'd have to maintain 2 configs
Another recent example is `oci-container-configuration` which
defines
a subset of docker-cli startup arguments. The problem is that
`docker
run` command has 96 options and the configuration only uses a
handful,
lacking a way to provide the remaining ones.
I think guix should not embed config generators for user
software. The
only need I see for such generators is when there are options
which
should be the same among multiple applications (e.g. color
schemes or
shared directories). For such usecase guix should provide better
text
manipulation tools which home owners could use to parameterise
configs.
Best regards,
Sergey Trofimov
