bug#52808: Guix home should not assume that all targets are dot files

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Andrew,

Andrew Tropin <andrew@trop.in> skribis:

> On 2021-12-26 12:17, Nick Zalutskiy wrote:
>
>> The following configuration results in a `~/.run` symlink being
>> created. My expectation is that a `~/run` symlink is created
>> instead. (ie. not a dotfile)
>
> Some how I missed it and not documented home-files-service-type in the
> manual, I'll add it soon.  Thank you for mentioning it.  It should break
> this expectation :)
>
>>> (home-environment
>>>   (services
>>>     (list (service
>>>             home-bash-service-type
>>>             (home-bash-configuration
>>>           (guix-defaults? #t)))
>>>       (simple-service 'my-files
>>>               home-files-service-type
>>>               `(("run" ,(local-file "run")))))))
>>
>> This applies to all other targets. My expectation is that the
>> configuration should expect the exact target and not make an
>> assumption that all targets are hidden files, since that allows for
>> more utility:

I share Nick’s surprise.  :-)

[...]

> It's intentional and is a part of a design decision:
>
> For example for ("config/guix/channels.scm" ,(local-file "./chans.scm"))
> chans.scm goes not to ~/.config/guix/channels.scm, but to
> $XDG_CONFIG_DIR/guix/channels.scm, which can be a different location
> from ~/.config, absent dot should partially break this expectation.
>
> It's a bad practice to use something without "config/..."  prefix and
> generally it should be avoided, it still possible to use something
> different in rare use-cases, for example for zsh: ("zshenv"
> ,zshenv-file-like-here), because it's hard to implement the lookup for
> initial configuration file other way for shells.

Oh, I see.

> You can elaborate more on what you try to achieve and I can try to give
> you a recommendation how to implement it.

I’d expect ‘home-files-service-type’ to do just that: add files to the
home directory, without trying to be smart.

Would it make sense to distinguish between ‘home-files’ and (say)
‘home-xdg-configuration-files’?

The latter would copy files to $XDG_CONFIG_DIR at activation time,
whereas the former would just copy them to $HOME.


I’d also suggest removing special handling of HOME/files in
symlink-manager.scm.  Relations between the various components of Guix
Home should preferably be made explicit via service extensions, and not
implicit through conventions like this ‘files’ sub-directory.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.