No upgrade after pull, and Guix philosophy (was: readline problem)

[Wiktor Żelazny]

On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 12:22:51PM +0100, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:

> There are also good reasons why you wouldn’t want to upgrade your
> default profile every time you upgrade Guix.  Software in your default
> profile may not actually build with the current version of Guix, or you
> are perfectly happy with the version you have installed, or for
> reproducibility reason you really want to stay with the current
> well-known versions and only add a new independent tool…

This sounds rather brittle: you need to keep things in your head. It’s
like being a liar: you need to remember what lie you told to what
person. And then you make an error and your byzantine construction (of
software versions or lies) falls down.

Is this in the spirit of Guix at all? I mean, is this functional package
management? Wouldn’t it be nicer to have manifests support an additional
(optional) field, viz. guix commit corresponding to given package, and
manage your profile using that explicit manifest file? Or aren’t
inferiors suitable for such purpose?

WŻ

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