Development repositories as Guix channels

[Arun Isaac]

Hi,

This is with reference to the "Level 2: The repository as a channel"
section in the Guix blog post "From development environments to
continuous integration—the ultimate guide to software development with
Guix"[1]. This section describes how to convert a project repository
into a Guix channel so that the repository can double as a way to
distribute packages. I have been trying to follow the instructions and
have hit a little snag.

The post says the source field of the package definition should be a
local-file file-like object. This is fine as long as we are using `guix
build' to build packages in the repository. But, when the repository is
distributed as a channel, the local-file becomes meaningless. The
channel only has access to the sources under the .guix/modules directory
and none of the sources required to build the package itself.

It seems to me that it is not possible to distribute project
repositories as Guix channels. But hopefully, I'm missing something
simple. Could anybody please clarify?

I'm CCing Ludo since they are the author of the blog post in question,
and I'm CCing Efraim since I know they are working on something similar.

Thanks,
Arun

[1]: 
https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2023/from-development-environments-to-continuous-integrationthe-ultimate-guide-to-software-development-with-guix/