Ricardo Wurmus <rek...@elephly.net> writes: > My work on Guix is dominated by bulk upgrades of hundreds of R > packages. There is no point in submitting the upgrades > individually. In fact, my work on Guix has become so dominated by > R upgrades that I barely ever get to do much else. This means I’m > unlikely to review more contributions and increased friction in > performing these massive upgrades would only make it less likely > that I can perform them at all.
What if the CRAN packages lived in a separate channel? I don’t think it would be sustainable if we managed all language ecosystems (Emacs, Python, Rust, etc) the way R currently is in Guix. <https://github.com/garrgravarr/guix-emacs> is an example of a channel with automated fetching from a language-specific package archive (MELPA). Maybe a separate channel would give you more freedom to explore approaches to automation? I assume the automated bulk updates mean the R packages undergo somewhat less scrutiny than typical Guix package updates. Having automatically updated packages and human-reviewed packages shipping in the same channel seems confusing for end users. Also, for automated bulk updates, I don’t think we should create separate commits per package update. Presumably not all of the intermediate commits are tested. It’s possible to revert or bisect by hunk instead of by commit, as well. —Liam
