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

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Andrew Tropin <andrew@trop.in> skribis:

>>> 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’?
>
> Yep, I can do that, actually, it will be even better for the purpose I
> originally had.  I'll make home-files to store files as it is and
> symlink manager not to add leading dots and a separate folder for
> xdg configs.

Neat.

> Ludo, Nick, what do you think about following names?
> ~/.guix-home/home-dir-files/
> ~/.guix-home/xdg-config-dir-files/

I’d make it ‘…/home-files’ and ‘…/xdg-configuration-files’, but that’s a
detail.

>> 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?
>
> Unfortunatelly, I don't know how to implement polymorphic behavior the
> other way with current extension mechanism, so I would prefer to keep
> this relation implicit,

I’m not sure I follow but maybe I should try by myself to get a better
understanding.

Thanks for your feedback!

Ludo’.