Re: At the boundry between abuse of lists and abuse of records

[Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hi Guix,


Following on this same thread, I've come up with a full record based
implementation for Exim, but now I encounter another problem with
records.  After adding records for all the Exim fields (hundreds of
options), gnu/services/mail.scm takes longer to compile.  So much longer
that the guix-cuirass-bot times out compiling guix-system.drv.

You can see the PR at https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/pulls/10894

It seems large define-configuration records are slow to compile, and
simulitaneaously, define-configuration yields the most human-readable
code.

I think having complete autonomy and hackability of email, the OG free
and decentralized social media that is so often used as
proof-of-personhood, is of supreme importance for Guix.  IMO, we should
allow the extra compile time and fix the slowness of
define-configuration later, but this is a decision that affects everyone
(each "guix pull" gets seconds longer).

What do you think?


-Zacchae