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2013-04-21.log
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<Steap>well, I was about to go to sleep, but hi! <CaptainLex>Hello Steap! I was going to ask you a bit about the project, but I can wait until tomorrow! <Steap>I'm waiting for "apt-get upgrade" to finish. <CaptainLex>What I wonder the most about the project is why exactly it would take three months <Steap>we're talking about packaging a huge DE <Steap>so basically, it will require packaging graphics toolkit, such as GTK+ or Qt <Steap>it will require support for whatever languages the project use (Vala, for instance) <Steap>we probably will have to decide how to support certain features <Steap>for example, the OpenBSD folks find it hard to package Gnome because some of its components require systemd <Steap>and they obviously do not want to use systemd <Steap>since we do notreally want that either <Steap>The work itself isn't so hard, I guess <Steap>You'd mostly have to know how much of a DE you want to package <Steap>what steps you're gonna have to take (basically, where t ostart, where to go from there) <Steap>and make decisions about stuff like systemd <Steap>well, it's almost 2am for me, so I don't feel like trolling <Steap>but well, some people just do not want to use systemd as their init system <Steap>and I think civodul is not really found of it <Steap>I think he's working on a Guile way of doing this kind of stuff :) <Steap>but well, systemd is just an example <CaptainLex>Well, I'll let you sleep! I'll start using Guix tonight and investigate packaging something simple <Steap>I don't really know what kind of technologies are used in modern DEs <Steap>do you know how to use git ? <CaptainLex>I use git as personal source control, but never more than that <Steap>well, packaging sl should be easy <Steap>git add Makefile.am gnu/packages/sl.scm <Steap>git send-email --to bug-guix@gnu.org 0001-xxx.patch <Steap>then we'll review the patch on the mailing list <mark_weaver>Did GNOME actually decide to require systemd? Which component requires it? <Steap>mark_weaver: I don't really, I stopped using Gnome quite a long time ago <Steap>but the BSD people seem to have trouble with it <CaptainLex>I haven't used a full DE in a while; but it surprises that systemd is so controversial, since arch comes with it <CaptainLex>and arch tries to be as uncontroversial as they can! <CaptainLex>Is there anyone around? I have a few questions about the Guix daemon <CaptainLex>I'm getting an error trying to build a package that the guix-builder group has no members, even though $groups guix-builder1 outputs guix-builder <mark_weaver>I have a vague recollection that you might need to make 'guix-builder' the primary group of each of the 'guix-builder*' users, by putting its group ID in the fourth field of /etc/passwd <CaptainLex>Hmmm, looks like it already is though. Darn niche alpha software <CaptainLex>The fourth field of /etc/passwd is already the gid of guix-builder, and my normal approach is Google <mark_weaver>CaptainLex: oh, so maybe the problem is the other way around. does the 'guix-builder' line in /etc/group contain the names of all the 'guix-builder*' users? <CaptainLex>I installed guix, setup the daemon, turned it on <CaptainLex>and it's been installing various packages (I caught a glimpse of make, linux-libre, and perl) for like half an hour <CaptainLex>is this installing dependencies, and it's just installing a bunch because they're system dependencies? <youlysses>CaptainLex: It looks like it's installing the whole of the "distro" right now. <youlysses>CaptainLex: I haven't done an install until right after, 0.1 came out... but it might be a bug. I don't know why the default behavior would be to bootstrap the whole of the custom distro. :-U <CaptainLex>So is there a preferred way of stopping an install? Ctrl-C would do the trick, but is there something preferred? <youlysses>CaptainLex: Killing it via a system-call like that should be find... though I don't know if any event code has been written yet to handle it. :-U I'm not the most knowledgeable, tbh... (Sorry!) :-/ <CaptainLex>youlysses: That's fine! We'll discover together! <CaptainLex>youlysses: I have discovered that when you tried to installing it again, it picks up where it left off when I killed it <CaptainLex>is the per-user, unprivileged install capability of nix and guix a special feature of consequence of the functional design? <youlysses>CaptainLex: Again, no expert -- but I believe an unrelated decision. <mark_weaver>Guix does not use any libraries or compilers from your host distro. it is completely independent. <mark_weaver>so it has to start out by bootstrapping the toolchain and all needed libraries from scratch. <CaptainLex>mark_weaver: I thought as much, but the packages I saw being installed seemed unnecessary. Luckily, due to the aforementioned magic I am no worse off for having killed it~ <mark_weaver>well, guix itself is built using libraries (and guile) from your host system.. but the actual things that are built in guix are completely independent. <mark_weaver>remember that the goal is for guix to be a whole distro, like nixos. <CaptainLex>(although it will make packaging cowsay easier!) <mark_weaver>it was probably needed by the build system of something that *is* needed. <youlysses>CaptainLex: It's more-or-less going to be the "official GNU system" and a lot of GNU tools require 3rd party software to some-degree as mark_weaver pointed out. :-P <CaptainLex>So I suppose as far as that goes, GNOME is the most appropriate DE to package by default <youlysses>To my knowledge, xorg nor wayland has been packaged yet, though. <CaptainLex>But one day I'll see a fully-interactive Scheme shell <mark_weaver>Guix is not just GNU software. Vim is included, for example :) <mark_weaver>it will be a lot of work to make it bootable, and a lot more work to get an entire modern DE like GNOME in. <CaptainLex>Steap: while my Guix distro is installing its first big grip of packages, I have a couple questions about how to handle packaging sl <CaptainLex>Haha sorry, my computer's been locking up recently (???) <CaptainLex>Well, sl is built using a single traditional makefile <CaptainLex>(and is not installed - the readme tells you to put the result in /usr/local/bin manually!) <Steap>I think you should use the GNU build system <Steap>You'll just have to do (alist-remove 'configure %standard-phases) <Steap>so that "./configure" is not run <Steap>and you will have to define the install phase yourself <CaptainLex>Is there a different guide than the example in the main documentation for package definition? Or should I check out the source for some others? <Steap>there is no other documentation <Steap>I suggest you take a look at some of the gnu/packages/*.scm files :) <CaptainLex>is that a full argument by itself, or it is passed to build-system? <Steap>CaptainLex: it's a function defined by guix <CaptainLex>Student proposal opens soon! Gah I need to hurry up! :P <youlysses>CaptainLex: More like noon, here, but thanks. :-) <CaptainLex>youlysses: Well, any time someone goes from -Zzz to normal, it's morning ;) <CaptainLex>So Steap, I'm thinking I'll be targeting GNOME in my proposal <CaptainLex>I know it's huge and all, but it seems appropriate to package another GNU project <CaptainLex>I have obligations for the rest of the day, so I'm hoping to get sl packaged and on the mailing list Monday or Tuesday <CaptainLex>Then cowsay after that (thanks, whoever packaged Perl 5 already!) <CaptainLex>Then I'll probably be in a better position to talk about the real proposal <Steap>looking forward to reading your patches! <CaptainLex>Anyway, I have to go into Windows for a bit... :'( <CaptainLex>Hello civodul! I'm working on my first Guix package! <civodul>usually, you would run ./configure && make && make check when getting a source tarball <CaptainLex>Do you mean after I cloned the guix repo, make check on guix itself? <civodul>after clone, you must first run ./bootstrap <civodul>the ./configure && make && make check <CaptainLex>Ahhhh yes I did! I installed it, though I had difficulty installing any packages <civodul>make sure to report details on the list :-) <CaptainLex>I will as soon as I can decide whether it's really a bug :P <CaptainLex>Immediately after installing, I attempted to install hello, and it spent like half an hour installing packages like linux-libre and perl, which seemed to me like those could justifiably be dependencies of the distro as a whole, and then before it finished my computer froze, which it's been doing lately (I believe quite unrelated to guix) <CaptainLex>(I may have installed a sillier, brokener version of gcc that's leaking memory a few days ago) <Steap>I think Guix installs quite a lot of things the first time <civodul>hope it's just the computer that freezes ;-) <CaptainLex>I don't know, civodul, here in Minnesota we had twelve inches of snow three days ago <CaptainLex>So currently when guix receives improper syntax, it backtraces, yes? <civodul>there's no "backtrace" if it's a syntax error <CaptainLex>And plans for more helpful error messages are presumably for a version later than 0.1? <civodul>but i'm not sure it could do much better <CaptainLex>I mean, I'm referring to passing aruments to the command line <CaptainLex>Well, for instance, guix package -i without any arguments <civodul>ERROR: In procedure args-fold: Missing required argument after `-i' <civodul>CaptainLex: BTW did you talk with Steap about packaging GNOME for GSoC? <CaptainLex>I've definitelt decided on GNOME for philosophical and personal reasons <CaptainLex>But I'm going to make a few small packages first to get a hang of it <CaptainLex>I'm starting of with sl, the train that trolls people who mistype ls <CaptainLex>But before that can happen, I'm getting Guix set up and reading existing package recipes <Steap>funny how the binary subtituter doesn't help <Steap>CaptainLex: are you on an x86_64 machine ? <CaptainLex>My processor is, but I can never remember which version of arch I installed <civodul>CaptainLex: if you use /nix/store as the store directory, it should be able to download pre-built binaries <civodul>see the recent threads on the mailing list <CaptainLex>I am using /nix/store. I'm getting a buil error 977 into installing gcc <civodul>could you post all the details on bug-guix? <civodul>including the architecture, the command you typed in, Guile version, and last 30 lines of the build log <Steap>I have no idea why your build fails <Steap>what do you call "Guix branch master, v.2" ? <Steap>I don't think it has anything to do with Guile 2.1.0 <CaptainLex>I'm also not confident that 2.1 is what it's calling, as 2.0.7 is also installed