bug#46803: User manual does not explain Profiles (nor GUIX_PROFILE)

[Luis Felipe]

On Friday, February 26, 2021 11:30 PM, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me@tobias.gr> 
wrote:

> Luis Felipe,
>
> I think that would be very helpful. I'm trying to think of a concise, 
> correct, but actually useful definition of profiles for someone not already 
> familiar with them or Guix.
>
> Out of curiosity: how do you intuitively understand profiles, as someone 
> who's used Guix for a while?

I think I didn't intuitively understand profiles. I think I actually started 
using them last year (apart from the user profile) after reading the Guix 
Profiles in Practice recipe, which made things clearer to me (but I don't think 
I grok the concept).

So, right now, I see a profile like a collection of packages that you can 
activate/deactivate in your environment by setting the GUIX_PROFILE environment 
variable and sourcing its profile file.


> Luis Felipe via Bug reports for GNU Guix 写道：
>
> > [...] what is the GUIX_PROFILE variable, does it accept a single
> > path to a profile or more, and some use cases and > examples. [...]
>
> I don't think we should document GUIX_PROFILE. It's not part of the 
> definition of Guix profiles. It should not matter to users nor should they 
> rely on previously observed behaviour. AIUI there are no supported ‘use 
> cases’, beyond copy-pasting Guix error messages...

In the Guix Profiles in Practice recipe, for example, you are instructed to set 
GUIX_PROFILE and then use it when sourcing the profile. So I thought it 
deserved an entry in the index, since it is mentioned so often when working 
with profiles.

I think I was expecting something like:

GUIX_PROFILE
  This is an environment variable that you can set to
  [...]. Its value is an absolute path to a Guix profile.
  See Profiles for more information.

Now I'm confused.. :)