Re: List available versions of package.

[Philippe Veber]

Hi Ricardo,


> Also, is it expected that packages from guix commits dating
> > from a few years ago will still work in this setting? Thanks!
>
> Commits before the introduction of inferiors likely won’t work,
> unfortunately.
>

Sounds natural, thanks for the confirmation.


> For running old versions I recommend writing new package variants
> instead and including them in a channel.  Using inferiors is a good idea
> when you want to reproduce a Guix environment that somebody else (or
> your younger self) recorded, but I would not recommend them as a way to
> make past software variants available.  If you are not interested in a
> particular old state of the world but only care about a particular
> version of a single piece of software (that may be built with current
> toolchains and libraries) then package variants are a better idea.
>

Alright, thanks! One question though: I suppose dependencies of these
packages have to be maintained in the same channel right? Otherwise, if I
rely on packages from guix distribution, they can be dropped or updated to
an incompatible version at any moment. That scares me a little, because it
could break my channel anytime, or am I mistaken?


>
> For bioinfo package variants also take a look at the guix-bimsb channel:
>
>     https://github.com/BIMSBbioinfo/guix-bimsb
>
> (I should update the README to recommend using channels instead of
> GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH…)
>

Looks interesting for me! I'll ping you there for further questions!


> --
> Ricardo
>
>