Arun Isaac writes: >> But I think 'guix package' can be made a lot more user-friendly by not >> showing the build output (by default). The summary of what will be >> installed, and some progress indicator or at least something moving to >> show the user it's doing something, and eventually the success or >> failure message is enough. > > Is it possible to have `guix package' NOT build from source? I really > hate it when big packages like icecat, epiphany, or libreoffice start > building on my machine. It takes about a day for each one of these > packages to build on my machine, and they generally swap so much into > HDD, that I can hardly do anything else when building. Because of this > inconvenience, I keep postponing upgrading my packages. > > Also, sometimes having to "--fallback" to building source is such a > pain. I think the end user needs a Debian-like experience (or like other > conventional non-source distros) where they can ALWAYS download the > latest packages from the repos.
There's a bug I opened about adding an --only-substitutes option: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=26608 Ludo seems to support it, so I guess really someone just needs to implement it. It would result in a lot less churn for a lot of us :)
