3 ms·

Just an anecdote, I accidentally broke something in my Guix system config but I couldn't figure out how to debug the scheme errors, and I had to reinstall

grumbel 5y ago
That's my experience as well. Guix error messages can get quickly completely unreadable, as you are five layers depth into some Scheme macro expansion and wherever that code originally came from that caused the problem is long forgotten by the time the error message is created. Having a whole system, including the package database, build out of raw Scheme really doesn't feel like a good idea. It sure is flexible, but also really brittle and the performance is quite horrible. I am currently in the process of switching over to Nix, which handles that all a bit more sanely.
heeeman 5y ago
Yeah, that always seems to be the problem with embedded DSLs. Eventually you need to know your way around the host language.
podiki 5y ago
We can definitely improve the error reporting (e.g. just the other day there was a patch to better improve error reporting in a system configuration to go directly to the configuration line rather than the system that uses that code). Submitting bugs with unhelpful error messages to Guix and/or Guile developers is much appreciated I hear. However, it should be hard to break a Guix system, since you can always roll back. Of course you can find a way (I changed an ext4 flag that turns out Grub doesn't like, but that has nothing to do with Guix), but as long as you let Guix do its job and try not to manually work around it, you should be able to undo everything. Of course nothing is perfect, but I hope you reported it. In my experience the Guix devs and community is keen to improve.
opan 5y ago
You couldn't boot an older system generation and then fetch its version of the config to get back to a working state?
- assbuttbuttass 5y ago
  I'm not sure how to get an old version of the config from the store. I tried searching for *configuration.scm but nothing showed up

grumbel 5y ago

That's my experience as well. Guix error messages can get quickly completely unreadable, as you are five layers depth into some Scheme macro expansion and wherever that code originally came from that caused the problem is long forgotten by the time the error message is created. Having a whole system, including the package database, build out of raw Scheme really doesn't feel like a good idea. It sure is flexible, but also really brittle and the performance is quite horrible. I am currently in the process of switching over to Nix, which handles that all a bit more sanely.

heeeman 5y ago

Yeah, that always seems to be the problem with embedded DSLs. Eventually you need to know your way around the host language.

podiki 5y ago

We can definitely improve the error reporting (e.g. just the other day there was a patch to better improve error reporting in a system configuration to go directly to the configuration line rather than the system that uses that code). Submitting bugs with unhelpful error messages to Guix and/or Guile developers is much appreciated I hear. However, it should be hard to break a Guix system, since you can always roll back. Of course you can find a way (I changed an ext4 flag that turns out Grub doesn't like, but that has nothing to do with Guix), but as long as you let Guix do its job and try not to manually work around it, you should be able to undo everything. Of course nothing is perfect, but I hope you reported it. In my experience the Guix devs and community is keen to improve.

opan 5y ago

You couldn't boot an older system generation and then fetch its version of the config to get back to a working state?

assbuttbuttass 5y ago
I'm not sure how to get an old version of the config from the store. I tried searching for *configuration.scm but nothing showed up