Post scriptum: Writing this message gave me enough inspiration to
continue exploring this problem myself. So I think I don't need any
help at the moment. Nevertheless, I'm sharing this message anyway in
case someone does want to say something insightful, or in case it is
useful others.
Hi all,
I patched icedove in https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/pulls/7488, from a
branch in my own guix fork,
https://codeberg.org/hugobuddel/guix-mirror/src/branch/fix-icedove .
Since the PR is not yet merged, I thought I'll use the branch to make an
inferior and install the package from there. But I can't figure out how
to do it.
I have this:
```
$ cat my-manifest-icedove.scm
(use-modules (srfi srfi-1)
(guix channels)
(guix inferior)
(guix packages))
(define channels-icedove
(list (channel
(name 'guix)
(url "https://codeberg.org/hugobuddel/guix-mirror";)
(branch "fix-icedove"))))
(define inferior-icedove
(inferior-for-channels channels-icedove))
(define icedove-working
(first (lookup-inferior-packages inferior-icedove "icedove")))
(packages->manifest
(list icedove-working))
```
This setup works fine for a branch from guix proper, e.g. "gnome-team".
The problem seems to be that I cannot add an introduction, since I
cannot sign a commit with a key from .guix-authorizations:
```
$ guix package -n -m my-manifest-icedove.scm
Updating channel 'guix' from Git repository at
'https://codeberg.org/hugobuddel/guix-mirror'...
/mnt/data/hugo/system/my-manifest-icedove.scm:7:8: warning: channel
'guix' lacks 'introduction' field but '.guix-authorizations' found
guix package: error: channel 'guix' lacks an introduction and cannot be
authenticated
hint: Add the missing introduction to your channels file to address the
issue. Alternatively, you can pass `--disable-authentication', at the
risk of running unauthenticated and thus potentially malicious code.
```
I'm fine with disabling authentication, but I don't know how to do that:
```
$ guix package -n -m my-manifest-icedove.scm --disable-authentication
guix package: error: disable-authentication: unrecognized option
```
Any of you an idea on how disable authentication through `guix package -m`?
Oh, scouring the manual shows that "7.5 Invoking guix git authenticate"
has a paragraph about authenticating a "branch called personal-fork"
that "has a different introduction than other branches". Sounds like
what I'm trying to do.
It seems the solution is to properly sign my commits, and add a keyring
branch to my fork, and then update my .git/config. It seems I don't
need to modify .guix-authorizations, but not sure.
I'll do that, as that would probably be 'the right thing to do'. E.g.
it would make it slightly safer for others to use the branch. But just
disabling authentication would be fine with me for now.
Or maybe I can add my icedove channel to my channels.scm and use guix
pull --disable-authentication. That should work, since my fixed icedove
has a higher version. (But preferably I'd turn of authentication per
channel.)
Hmm maybe we should just remove disabling of authentication? That seems
like a better step then adding it everywhere.
Thanks,
Hugo
