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<rekado_>I’m surprised to read that Python environments in Nix lack something compared to Guix. I thought we weren’t doing so well with our PYTHONPATH handling.

<rekado_>“Ma toute petite expérience de nix est que c'est une usine à gaz du point de vue de l'utilisateur” – a “gas factory”?

<rekado_>I feel the urge to 1) hack a little to make it possible to write package definitions in Python and 2) write a blog post about all the different ways (apart from Scheme) to write package definitions in Guix

<civodul>hey rekado_!

<civodul>"using à gaz" is like a sledgehammer, but pejorative

<civodul>not sure what a good translation would be, maybe "kludge" as an approximation

<civodul>anyway, i'm all for #2!

<civodul>also introducing "guix import"

<civodul>for #1, i'm not sure

<civodul>is it really a crucial factor?

<civodul>apparently yes, but OTOH, you can use Guix without writing packages all day long

<civodul>just like you can use Emacs (or Spacemacs) without writing much elisp

<civodul>dunno

<rekado_>I thought: if python-on-guile is usable for simple stuff, perhaps we can show that it is *possible* to write Guix package definitions in Python

<rekado_>sometimes that’s all that’s needed to push someone over the edge: “if this Scheme thing turns out to be too difficult we can always fall back to Python… Let’s do it!”

<rekado_>“I read that in a blog post once…”

<rekado_>it doesn’t have to be … practical, but I think it can be a nice showcase of flexibility, and a demonstration of how superficial syntax is.

<civodul>ah, yes :-)

<civodul>because, if it had to be practical, that'd be quite a bit of work :-)

<civodul>i would be more confident with Wisp actually, technically & socially

<rekado_>that goes without saying!

<rekado_>I imagined the blog post to show wips, JSON, Python, and finally (as eye bleach): Scheme.

<rekado_>*wisp

<civodul>and and... ECMAscript!

<civodul>actually that one's easy

<rekado_>could be combined with the JSON thing, no?

<rekado_>the whole “script” of ECMAscript would only be needed for custom phases.

<civodul> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2014-04/msg00000.html

<civodul>custom phases would still have to be Scheme, regardless of the surface language

<civodul>or we'd need extra magic

<civodul>the ECMAscript front-end in Guile is bad, but it may be good enough for package definitions

<civodul>then we need multi-language support in channels i guess?

<civodul>do we want one language per channel?

<rekado_>ah, right, because of staging

<civodul>actually ecmascript suffers from bitrot, require('guix'); no longer works on 3.0 :-/

<civodul>i think we should improve error reporting and hints for Scheme, too

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2020-09-19.log