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2025-12-09.log
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<ieure>I've never used Nix, but have seen several people ask about flakes. <icy-thou`>Because what I do is `nixos-rebuild switch --sudo --flake .#(hostname) --impure` and I define what system configurations can be fetched in the flake.nix, which then searchs for the appropriate default.nix in the host dir and then tries to stitch together my config <ieure>I think I get the drift, though again, I have never once in my life used Nix in any capacity whatsoever. <ieure>icy-thou`, What I do on my stuff is factor all the common stuff into transformation functions which take an operating-system or home-environment and return one with specific changes made. Then write a config with only the machine-specific stuff (hostname and disks), and run it through the transforms. <ieure>icy-thou`, Most of it is in that repo. <ieure>But I can share a lightly redacted system config. <icy-thou`>your config is perhaps what I had in mind. I might replicate that setup 🤔 <icy-thou`>And how do you invoke the rebuild system command ? <ieure>`cd ~/projects/dotfiles; sudo guix system reconfigure system/$(hostname).scm' <dckc>anybody have experience using guix to partition disks? <ieure>I have a bash alias that does it, so I really only type "gxrc," but that's what it's doing. <ieure>This came up on guix-devel in the last week. <icy-thou`>Dammit, this time I am making the effort to migrate even though many packages are missing <icy-thou`>I might just install them from distrobox or something <ieure>Uh, clarifying, the subject of having something like it came up. <ieure>There is not an actual thing which does it. <ieure>But all the pieces to do it already exist in Guix, just not put together in that particular way. <icy-thou`>One thing that I find interesting is the absence of an auto-update bot (IIRC that is not a thing ) <icy-thou`>Some package updates are not as crazy and could be automated, I think <ieure>It's not, it's definitely something people have talked about wanting to have. <ieure>But the move to Codeberg was a necessary prerequisite for anything like that, you can't auto-apply jack when it's patches on a mailing list. <icy-thou`>also, is there a plan to rewrite the nix daemon bit into scheme? <ieure>Yes, a Scheme rewrite of the daemon is also a thing people want / may have been some progress for that. <icy-thou`>Is there a roadmap that we can follow, or something akin to it? <icy-thou`>I read that article, but that was 2 years ago so I thought I should ask about the situation today <thalber>hi, i'm a nixos user looking to switch distros, need to check a few things before i start installing stuff. <thalber>1) is there a noticeable difference between nix and guix ito helper command performance? i don't mean system rebuilds (since those being heavy is probably unavoidable), i mean things like local package search (nix search knocks out my netbook by eating all the ram) <thalber>2) is guix completely disconnected from nix development-wise? i assumed yes since it's relatively old but want to double-check <thalber>3) is there any difference in how ephemeral shells and shelldirs work / is the situation with running fhs binaries as bad as on nixos? <FuncProgLinux>thalber: I haven't used nixOS but I'm beggining to use Nix inside Guix. For point 1. I've seen the nix search is a bit faster but haven't looked at RAM usage. 2. There are engineering differences in Guix AFAIK, even at the packaging level some things are simpler or more complex depending on your use-case. 3. The guix shell command is better crafter IMHO, and the fhs-binaries situation is mostly the same, with the exception that you cannot add fhs <FuncProgLinux>...with the exception that you cannot add fhs capabilities to package definitions. But you have "container" shells with FHS to wrap programs if you really need those. <thalber>container shells sound equivalent, and i'm always hoping not to write packages anyways <thalber>also to clarify, by point 2 i meant "does the guix project pull anything from nix upstream" <meaty>are binaries in guix packages supposed to have their debug symbols by default? or are they stripped <meaty>nvm, found the info page for it <ieure>meaty, I believe they're stripped by default. <basicnpc>Should I just learn to read to source code from now on? <icy-thou`>basicnpc: learning to read the source code is never wrong! <icy-thou`>You can also help make better docs with that skill ;) <basicnpc>I think so. Just want to confirm that I didn't miss some corners in the manual. <vagrantc>also looks like you're looking at the manual for guix 1.4, released ~2 years ago ... the newer manual *might* have more <vagrantc>it has been a source of confusion for ages ... <vagrantc>well, it currently shows both, as anyone installing from 1.4.0 might need the corresponding manual, and anyone using guix pull will need the latest manual <vagrantc>i think it changed from "devel" -> "latest" to give the clue <vagrantc>folks are also actively working on a release, which will help a lot if releases start happening more regularly eagain <basicnpc>How many active developers does guix currently have? <vagrantc>i think under 50 committers, and a handful of other regular contributors <vagrantc>"git log | grep Author" ought to give a pretty good idea :) <basicnpc>Sounds like a good number. Hopefully I can be useful one day too. <vagrantc>package updates are often a pretty good place to start ... usually pretty straightforward <basicnpc>I see. Usually you just have to change some parameters.. <vagrantc>and then learn the workflows around testing those changes <vagrantc>easiest for packages which are "leaf" packages, e.g. packages not used to build anything else <basicnpc>I'd like to have a working yazi to start with xD <basicnpc>also.. to get openssh sorted out so that I can develop on my main machine with emacs setting here.. <basicnpc>I think I had a config that allows people on the same LAN ssh into my root, but I want to allow it only for my current user (nonroot). <basicnpc>Any pointers would be appreciated! I need to leave a bit, but I will read log. Thank you vagrantc . <vagrantc>i've onyl set up ssh to allow anyone with valid login credentials <vagrantc>about to call it a day myself, but good luck! :) <bdunahu>If a modified or added package declaration builds without error, then in what cases could it still break guix pull? <untrusem>sneek: later tell edrx I will email or your msg you on irc, I have an exam today <basicnpc>Hm! I found a bug! pastebin.com/HYf1uLe1 <basicnpc>guix asked me to report it. But last time I touched this guix machine was ~1 year ago. Should I still report it? I was just trying to do `guix pull`. Had to leave in between so I stop it and `fg` to bring it back.. <basicnpc>Also, how should I proceed? I couldn't even guix pull.. <cbaines>I'm going to reboot guix-hetzner-2 which serves many of the websites, hopefully it won't be gone for long <basicnpc>(this was for my help request last night - as I cannot even guix pull now...) <basicnpc>2. I see lots of symbols in the guix source enclosed by <> (e.g. <gexp-output> in gexp.scm). Is this special syntax or convention? <basicnpc>seems to be a convention, but not a syntax.. thatks cbaines <basicnpc>I just defined a simple drv from a gexp (gexp->derivation "FOO" (gexp (begin (mkdir $out) (chdir $out) $out))). It's now a #<procedure..> object in scheme. How do I see it as an s-expr? <cbaines>What's it? If it's the gexp, there's gexp->approximate-sexp in (guix gexp) <basicnpc>Hmm.. I may be mistaken here. But my impression was that a derivation can be written as a file xyz.drv, which is just s-expressions. <basicnpc>I looked at the code of gexp->approxmiate-sexp, but it seems the result is not an faithful representation of the actual drv.. <ieure>Also of course it's not faithful, "approximate" is in the name. <basicnpc>Can a gexp be faithfully serialized to a file? <cbaines>ieure, derivations are actually sexp's I think, at least Guix uses Guile read to read them <a4censord>heya, i've been having problems with environment activation. Mostly around dbus / XDG_DATA_DIRS <ieure>Every .drv I've ever opened has looked like Nix stuff, not sexps. <cbaines>the parens are mixed (so ( and [) but they match up :) <ieure>Like don't they all start with: Derive(["output-name"], ...) ? <gabber>a4censord: what exactly are you trying to do and how does it fail? <a4censord>well i've installed playerctl in my guix home, and it ships dbus service files <a4censord>but these are never picket up by dbus (from the host distribution) <a4censord>I've manually added $GUIX_PROFILE/share to my xdg_data_dirs, but even after a restart its not picked up <cbaines>ieure, ah yeah, maybe it's just close enough for Guile to read it as an sexp, but not quite <gabber>a4censord: do you run the dbus home service? <a4censord>i was not - Though will that conflict with the already running one (i'm on arch, not only guix) <basicnpc>What's the difference between a drv and a .drv file...? <gabber>a4censord: unfortunately, i have no idea <gabber>but i could imagine the dbus-home-service to set up the home profile with env vars and all <gabber>a4censord: is your $GUIX_PROFILE/share added to your xdg_data_dirs set up for your whole login session? or just when you spawn a new shell? <Rutherther>basicnpc: depends on context. I would say usually a derivation (drv) is what .drv specifies <basicnpc>Where in the source code can I see how a derivation is 'compiled to effects'? <basicnpc>I guess this is my main goal at the moment.. <ieure>basicnpc, What are you trying to do? That's very low-level stuff; in ~3 years of using Guix I have never needed to touch this. Not saying you don't, but it's very unusual, which makes me wonder if you're on the right path or not. <basicnpc>ieure: I have my weird ways to understand stuff.. <basicnpc>I like to be able to inspect everything in a lisp repl. <basicnpc>Not here just for having a running guix os. I want to understand. <a4censord>gabber: added to the whole session, not just new shells <basicnpc>(in the mean while, I'm still struggling with the `guix pull` bug haha. That's the irony an academic faces everyday. Could think a lot, but cannot do a lot.) <basicnpc>I do think it will come after time though, and it usually comes faster. <Rutherther>basicnpc: that would be somewhere in the nix daemon subfolder. But believe thats going to be quite boring. It will basically just run what the.drv file specifies is the builder with the arguments it specifies <gabber>a4censord: i'm asking because you say that dbus does not "pick it up". so maybe the wrong variable is set or it is set in the wrong place...? <basicnpc>ieure: https://pastebin.com/HYf1uLe1 - guix asked me to report it, but I'm not sure if I should, as this guix machine hasn't been touched for a year, so perhaps the bug will go away once I do the right thing. <basicnpc>Rutherther good to know that in the end drv was brought to effect by Nix! <ieure>basicnpc, Oh, yeah, that's almost definitely not actually a bug, just keep retrying until it works. Sorry, I know it's dumb. <ieure>basicnpc, There's some kind of issue with the underlying GnuTLS stuff that causes the connections to substitute servers to break *way* more than they should. That's almost certainly what you're seeing. <ieure>This did get improved, it happens much less now, you're probably on a version from before that fix landed. <ieure>But... yeah, just keep retrying until it works. sucks <basicnpc>That's ok. Thanks! I'm running guix reconfigure multiple times, and each time it has a different error. But hopefully it's making progress. <a4censord>gabber: so after starting the home-dbus service it seems to work, ish <a4censord>problem i'm having now is that playerctld daemon forks, so herd thinks it died <gabber>what's still not working properly? <a4censord>well it works, but herd status shows it as failed (while its actualls running) <a4censord>also i think i have a full second instance of everything desktop env related now, so while it might not conflict it seems not ideal either <basicnpc>Is the elisp supported in guile scheme an actual elisp?! It has an emacs embedded in the process?!! <janneke>basicnpc: guile's elisp is a frontend re-implementation of elisp, good enough to run the current guile-emacs effort <a4censord>gabber: so about the full second instance of everything <a4censord>can i get my existing dbus into the env of shepherd somehow? <a4censord>so instead of starting a fresh dbus, just reuse the exising one <basicnpc>janneke, so it's using guile-emacs in the background?! that's amazing. <basicnpc>and one should expect different behaviors between that elisp and the 'latest official elisp'? <janneke>basicnpc: err, nop; guile's elisp is a standalone implementation; it's an elisp frontend that's part of guile's language tower <ieure>basicnpc, It is not "using guile-emacs in the background." <basicnpc>I see. Thanks for the tips. I'm reading more in guile's manual <janneke>basicnpc: guile-emacs is emacs with the elisp interpreter replaced with guile <ieure>"frontend" in compiler terms. The code that turns the source into the IR that the runtime/compiler use. <basicnpc>Does guile have a spec (no, not manual)? <ieure>CL is a standardized language, I don't believe Scheme is. RnRS documents are probably what you want. <gabber>a4censord: maybe asking the help-guix mailing list will produce better insight as more people read it. <gabber>sorry, i have no clue about all that jazz (: <identity>ieure: Scheme has a «proper» IEEE standard <basicnpc>ieure: Oh hey, reconfigure works now. Thanks for your tips! I can move on :-) <ieure>basicnpc, Spec question might be better for #guile or #scheme. <identity>but the R^#RS are the de facto standards <identity>Guile is an implementation of multiple languages, there is no standard apart from the specifications it implements <basicnpc>Anywhere I can read more about how guix has helped one become an efficient system admin (at work, paid)? <janneke>can you use this-package in an old-style, non-gexp'ed (arguments `... ) stanza (how?) and/or how to get at "this-package" in such an old-style arguments section? <identity>20 minutes wasted trying to figure out why i was getting an «unbound variable, try importing (a-module-that-i-already-imported)». it was because the (a-module-that-i-already-imported) had an unbound-variable error <identity>can the guix cli stop being a smartass and just tell me the actual error? <Rutherther>janneke: I dont think this-package has any relation to gexps. Its more of courtesy of guix records. So just unquoting should work. On the other hand old package style should generally be rewritten to gexps nowadays <Rutherther>No sorry. You wont really be able to use it without gexps as it will just give you that input and you cannot really do anything with it in the old style <Rutherther>In the old style you typically use inputs argument inside phases and %build-inputs in other contexts <janneke>now, /me is trying to figure-out how to use #:modules in an old style arguments thingy <basicnpc>I think it would be very helpful if this can be extended and made official. <ieure>basicnpc, The Guix installer does effectively the same thing. <Shecko>What Guix needs imo is some unixporn posts to get the marketing up /s <ieure>Except you don't have to manually set up disk labels, encrypt passwords, or choose BIOS/UEFI bootloader. <basicnpc>Yes, but a web UI feels much easier, and it's accessible and learnable from almost every wehre. <basicnpc>Yes, a few steps away == huge frictions already, especially for newcomers. <Shecko>(soon-to-be) newcomer here, what does guix solve that nix does not? <ieure>basicnpc, I do not think this is less friction. What would a Guix newcomer actually *do* with this config? <ieure>You have to know about blkid, partition your disks, etc. Then I guess copy the file into the installer and manually configure the system? It seems hugely more difficult than just using the installer, no? <basicnpc>ieure: To immediately see how flexibly they can config their system, and to quickly experience with some examples, and to mitigate the stress of learning a new language. <basicnpc>ieure: The config can be stored as a shorten url, and then the installer can just prompts for that url. <ieure>basicnpc, But the config *is not usable*. It's full of placeholders, which you have to manually populate. So the installer cannot use it at all. <janneke>ah, #:modules ((foo bar baz)) without any tick, of course <ieure>And the installer will generate a working config for you already. So like... what is the usecase? <ieure>Is it cool to generate a config? I guess. Is it *useful*? Don't think so. <Shecko>so I guess nothing. It's just trying to be an alt without the typical distro stuff (systemd and whatnot) <ieure>basicnpc, Okay, but you said this should be part of Guix. And I'm still just like... not seeing what problem it solves at all. What I do think would be useful is if there was a way to programmatically edit your actual configuration. Lots of new users have problems with Scheme, if you could upload your config and say "also add X service" and have it spit out the right thing. *That* seems very useful to me. <basicnpc>Shecko: I think that's a good question and I'd like to hear an answer too. <basicnpc>ieure: No problem gets solved. But it makes one (dumb like me) more easily get guix is about. <basicnpc>Shecko: I'm here but not nix because it's a lispy lang, and I believe it's just a better lang. But I'm also a (soon-be) newcomer so I don't know much yet. <weary-traveler>haven't scrolled back, but is the newcomer-issue being discussed one that could be addressed by testing/experimenting on a guix vm? <ieure>There are multiple newcomer issues. <ieure>I was saying that one I've seen frequently is people messing up Scheme syntax, missing use-module statements, putting things in the wrong place in the system config. And some sort of higher-level tool which edits the file for you could be helpful there. <weary-traveler>certainly, if there are some very common use-cases that could be addressed. though one would think the guix cookbook would handle that already <weary-traveler>instead of another way of specifying intent, which then is converted into scheme, i feel better editor/development support for guile would be of help <Shecko>Was the iso ever updated or still 2 year old ? <weary-traveler>tbf, i'm biased in that i think it's difficult to beat lisps at the syntactic level (i.e., at the level of intent-specification) <Shecko>wtf... there is a user called OL D <weary-traveler>Shecko: not too current with the mailing list, but probably will be in time for 1.5 release <Shecko>And the release is supposed to be in ? <untrusem>Shecko, 1.5.0 will be released very soon <identity>Shecko: in the next soon, unlikely to take 2 more years <Shecko>I wonder if I should get my config ready by then <Shecko>well well, next soon is an interesting choice of words <identity>i have no idea when exactly, but release is underway, so maybe in the next 30 days <untrusem>_Oh my god, its happening, Everybody Stay Calm, Everybody stay f**king calm_ <basicnpc>/me got too excited and broke his connection to the internet <qbit>installed via install.sh on a debian sid system.. doing a "guix pull" i just get : "SWH vault: requested bundle cooking, waiting for completion..." over and over <qbit>it ran for a good hour and a half... maybe 2 and never changed, any suggestions? <hapst3r>anyone here that will attend FOSDEM and stays at ICAB beginning from Friday? <untrusem>can can you upload the output in a pastebin <qbit>as in, attempt that command and upload the output? <qbit>literally the only thing the pull command sends out is the SWH thing above :D <untrusem>its relate to software heritage or something <luca>Does anyone know if a guix manifest can include options such as container, FHS, network, or references to packages in other scheme files? (like guix.scm) <luca>I tried `guix shell --export-manifest -CNFDf guix.scm clang@21 gdb` and it gave me `(specifications->manifest (list "clang" "gdb"))` which I don't think is quite correct <identity>luca: there actually is discussion on guix-devel about that <identity>or, rather, a very closely related topic <Rutherther>Manifest scm can definitely do everything that guix.scm can do <Rutherther>But the rest of the questions you have, no. Manifest.scm outputs manifest with individual entries to put to a profile <luca>Rutherther: I see. So manifest.scm can add packages (into a shell/profile/environment), but not container/FHS/Network settings <FuncProgLinux>I've built both local perl/go packages and each time I invoke guix shell -m manifest.scm the packages have to be rebuilt from scratch <FuncProgLinux>untrusem: That blog was a lifesaver, I was able to do a Makefile target to run deno on guix without resorting to the nonfree channel. Though it's hacky and it needs deno to be installed at the user's home. <Rutherther>FuncProgLinux: builds are always 'cached' implicitly by guix <Rutherther>moreover guix shell gc roots the profiles so that you do no gc collect it <FuncProgLinux>Rutherther: I see. So, guix has no way to know if I changed the artifacts in the local repository and that's why it rebuilds them every time? <miner>untrusem: so I was following the blog recommendation but still I cannot run the binaries that originally were compiled by guix: https://bpa.st/AKCA <untrusem>the error is related to it not being able to to connect to display <miner>ok I've managed to run it by adding this because of xorg: --preserve='^XAUTHORITY$' --expose="${XAUTHORITY}" <untrusem>you need that because when you run a guix fhs shell, its run as a container you need explicitly define what things to include in that <untrusem>for example when I run browsers in a containers it defaults to light mode <identity>untrusem: can the browser access dbus from the container? <untrusem> Failed to create DBus proxy for org.a11y.Bus: Cannot spawn a message bus without a machine-id: <identity>usually browsers get the «system default» theme from dbus on linux <identity>if you let the browser access the folder where it stores configuration, you can set the theme manually in the settings <identity>you can set it manually, but it will not be saved <miner>untrusem: have you tried to use this for dbus: --expose=/etc/machine-id ? <ggVGc>as a person who urinates I find that offensive <ggVGc>oh, sorry, that was definitely the wrong chat, haha... <ham5urg>do I have to add a path to reach the guix command as a user? <untrusem>I tried using enchant in place of enchant in emacs <untrusem>ispell-init-process: No dictionary available for 'en_US.utf8': The file "/home/untrusem/.guix-profile/lib/aspell/en" can not be opened for reading. <ham5urg>ahh, guix pull at first, before trying a dry run <untrusem>found it from a nix post on dictionaries lol <ham5urg>I try to install python with https://termbin.com/agn8 but after guix home reconfigure guix-home-config.scm there is still no python3 in my path. I did a source ~/.guix-home/profile/etc/profil too but to no avail. <ham5urg>I just had to logout/login. A prior source... was not enough. <ente>I want a GNU sticker for my laptop and put gnoogly eyes on it