Web development on Guix: nodejs, npm and all that

[t]

Hi Guix.

Do people do web-dev on Guix System? I need to dive back into the 
whole Node.js NPM ecosystem - something I've not touched for some 
years and I'm wondering how people go about e.g. installing NPM 
packages on Guix.

I started by reading (guix build node-build-system) as one does. I 
think I have a decent grasp on exactly how it goes about 
installing those NPM dependencies. Unsurprisingly you need to 
package all those dependencies as Guix packages, then supply them 
as inputs, whereupon the extra 'patch-dependencies phase will 
actually lookup those packages in your inputs and replace deps 
paths under "dependencies", "devDependencies", "peerDependencies" 
with store items as needed. Configure phase actually runs local 
install with --offline and --ignore-scripts which is 
understandable followed by build phase which does npm run build 
where the script is available. Followed by some tar and npm 
install from local package dance, which I don't fully understand, 
but I get the general idea and where we end up (I still haven't a 
clue what 'set-home phase does and why).

This is all very cute and reproducible, but ... JS web developers 
aren't exactly known for avoiding dependencies. Even just getting 
express-js to run would require me to package ungodly number of 
those dependencies.


If guix repo is indicative, looks like I'm not the only one to 
realise packaging those would be too much work unless the entire 
community somehow decides to come together and do an "NPM Summer 
of Hard Unpaid Labour".

So, how do people program for the Web, Node on Guix. Does =npm 
install= which defaults to local installation work well enough for 
most packages? An outline of what to expect and known problems and 
workarounds would be very useful.

Thank you