Hello, 

I am a Guix enthusiast, I use it for my personal setup as well as for my 
research (in Machine Learning and Statistics) and I wanted to share my 
experience on this discussion. 

I tried (unsuccessfully) several times to contribute to Guix and every time I 
fell short. Among these tentatives, I tried to contribute to documentation a 
long time ago ( [ https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=66295 | 
https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=66295 ] ), and in the end the 
ticket was closed prematurely. Remark that my suggestion from 3 years ago was 
in the end added to the documentation, not by me though. I also tried several 
times to contribute on other subjects and succeeded only once. 

I think the current process is aimed at already established commiters and 
beginners tend to be shut down quickly (at least this is my feeling). 
A wiki would allow easier (although maybe less structured) contributions. 

Maybe this is a feature, not a bug, as Ludovic was saying. But in my opinion 
having a community more open to "easy" contributions (here for documentation) 
would be beneficial. IMHO a solution to keep things in sync with Guix can 
either be by having a small curated cookbook as it is done now, or by having 
more people (i.e. people that are not yet contributing to Guix) contribute and 
declare things "out of date" when it becomes out of date. Remark that the lack 
of "how to" documentation was already mentioned as one of Guix's bad side in 
the contributor survey [ 
https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2025/guix-user-and-contributor-survey-2024-the-results-part-1/
 | 
https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2025/guix-user-and-contributor-survey-2024-the-results-part-1/
 ] 

On another note, I would also suggest that a wiki could encompass other 
channels (I am thinking guix-science typically) and how to find other channels, 
which is I think important. I already advised several people, typically on 
reddit, on how to use external channels and how to find them (via toys 
website). 

So this was my testimony as a (very) enthusiast Guix casual user who (several 
times now) failed to contribute. 

Timothée 

Reply via email to