[email protected] (Ludovic Courtès) writes: > John J Foerch <[email protected]> skribis: > >> [email protected] (Ludovic Courtès) writes: >> >>> John J Foerch <[email protected]> skribis: >>> >>>> I have just learned about 'guix import', and have the thought that a >>>> package importer would be the better way to go. Eventually I would like >>>> to package software that I've written in CHICKEN for GuixSD, and only a >>>> package importer would make that feasible. >>> >>> "Thompson, David" <[email protected]> skribis: >>> >>>> On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 8:11 AM, John J Foerch <[email protected]> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>>> First a question about /var/lib, and please excuse the newbie question. >>>>> If chicken extensions were installed to /var/lib, wouldn't that go >>>>> against the spirit of guix of keeping every program isolated? Isn't >>>>> /var/lib global state? >>>> >>>> Yes, but this program is not Guix. It's a completely separate package >>>> manager, and it should work as intended. >>> >>> Agreed. So I think there are two issues at hand: >>> >>> 1. How to arrange our ‘chicken’ package so that ‘chicken-install’ >>> works as intended. >>> >>> 2. How to import Eggs so that they can be first-class Guix packages. >>> >>> #2, which means writing an importer, is definitely the most profitable >>> approach: It’s best as a user to have all the packages managed by the >>> same tool, especially if that provides isolation, transactional upgrades >>> and rollbacks, etc. >>> >>> #1 is useful for CHICKEN users who are used to ‘chicken-install’ >>> (similarly pip, npm, etc. are supposed to work.) It should work in the >>> same way as on other distros. I’ve never used it though, so I can’t >>> give precise advice. >>> >> >> It installs all extensions to a single system-wide directory, with one >> path component that gives the binary version. On my debian machine, >> that is /var/lib/chicken/7 (for chicken 4.10.0). In that way, it is >> simpler than something like npm. > > Right. So to address #1, we should make sure it uses /var/lib, as > discussed earlier. >
I'm finally getting back to this. One point about chicken is that it does not support multiple extension directories, only one. They go into <VARDIR>/chicken/<BINARY-VERSION>. This introduces a difficulty because if VARDIR is /var/lib, then the default extensions (that come with chicken) get installed to a global directory. The chicken-install system will then work, but in the future when we add a package importer, imported packages would also go into this global directory. If on the other hand, VARDIR is (string-append out "/var/lib") the default extensions and imported extensions go to the right place, but manual chicken-install cannot write to that location. Any further thoughts on this, given that information? -- John Foerch
