TODO

   1 -*- mode: org; coding: utf-8; -*-
   2
   3 Copyright © 2012, 2013 Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>
   4
   5   Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
   6   are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
   7   notice and this notice are preserved.
   8
   9 * integrate needed Nix code
  10
  11 Guix uses Nix’s daemon (‘nix-worker’, later renamed to ‘nix-daemon’) to
  12 actually perform builds, scheduling, substitution of pre-built binaries,
  13 and GC-related tasks.  The daemon mainly uses ‘libstore’ from Nix.
  14 Integrating it in Guix itself will make Guix self-contained, thereby
  15 simplifying our users’ lives.
  16
  17 ** Remove dependency on OpenSSL
  18
  19 The ‘openssl’ command-line tool is used in libstore to sign store paths
  20 to be exported, and to check such signatures.  The signing keys are
  21 usually in /etc/nix/signing-key.{pub,sec}.  They are a PKCS#8-encoded
  22 X.509 SubjectPublicKeyInfo.  These can be decoded with the [[http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnutls/2012-12/msg00012.html][C API of
  23 GnuTLS]], but not yet with its Guile bindings.  There’s also
  24 ‘gnutls_privkey_sign_data’ to sign, and related functions.
  25
  26 ** Add a binary cache substituter
  27
  28 Like scripts/download-from-binary-cache.pl in Nix, but written in
  29 Scheme.  Substituters allow pre-built binaries to be downloaded when
  30 they are available from a trusted source.
  31
  32 ** MAYBE Add a substituter that uses the GNUnet DHT
  33
  34 Would be neat if binaries could be pushed to and pulled from the GNUnet
  35 DHT.  Guix users would sign their binaries, and define which binaries
  36 they trust.
  37
  38 ** Add a remote build hook
  39
  40 Like scripts/build-remote.pl in Nix.
  41
  42 * infrastructure
  43
  44 ** have a Hydra instance build Guix packages
  45
  46 [[http://nixos.org/hydra/][Hydra]] is a continuous integration tool based on Nix.  It now has
  47 [[https://github.com/NixOS/hydra/commit/f27ae1d5663680400cb99cfb898970f34d8d21be][Guile/Guix support]], which allows “build recipes” written in Guile using
  48 Guix to be used directly on Hydra.
  49
  50 For a start, we may use the instance at hydra.nixos.org, generously
  51 provided by TU Delft.  However, in the future, we may want to setup our
  52 own instance at gnu.org.
  53
  54 * add guix-pull
  55
  56 A tool that fetches the latest code from [[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/snapshot/guix-master.tar.gz][cgit]], builds a derivation that
  57 unpacks it, copies only .scm files (this excludes guix/config.in) and
  58 compiles it, and then links to it from ~/.local/guix/latest .  Change
  59 guix-build and guix-package to have that directory first in their load
  60 path.
  61
  62 * user interface
  63 ** Add a package.el (Emacs) back-end
  64
  65 Unfortunately package.el is monolithic, so most likely we’d have to
  66 write a new one based on it, as opposed to actually using it.
  67
  68 * extend <origin>
  69 ** add OpenPGP signatures:
  70
  71    (origin
  72      (method http-fetch)
  73      (uri "http://.../foo.tgz")
  74      (signature-uri (string-append uri ".sig"))
  75      (signer-openpgp-fingerprint "..."))
  76
  77 ** allow <origin> to be a derivation/package or a file
  78
  79 * extend <package>
  80
  81 ** add support for ‘search-paths’
  82
  83 This should be passed to the build system, to extend package-specific
  84 search path environment variables–like ‘GUILE_LOAD_PATH’, ‘PERL5LIB’,
  85 etc.
  86
  87 ** add a ‘user-environment-hook’
  88
  89 This should specify builder code to be run when building a user
  90 environment with ‘guix-package’.  For instance, Texinfo’s hook would
  91 create a new ‘dir’.
  92
  93 ** add ‘patches’ there
  94
  95 ** extend ‘propagated-build-inputs’ with support for multiple outputs
  96
  97 #+BEGIN_SRC scheme
  98   (outputs '("out" "include"))
  99   (propagated-build-inputs
 100     `(((("i1" ,p1 "o1")
 101         ("i2" ,p2))
 102        => "include")
 103       ("i3" ,p3)))
 104 #+END_SRC
 105
 106 * synchronize package descriptions with the [[http://directory.fsf.org][FSD]] and/or the Womb
 107
 108 Meta-data for GNU packages, including descriptions and synopses, can be
 109 dumped from the FSD:
 110 http://directory.fsf.org/wiki?title=GNU/Export&action=purge .
 111 We could periodically synchronize with that.
 112
 113 The [[./guix/gnu-maintenance.scm][Womb]] also contains synopses for all the GNU packages.
 114
 115 * support cross-compilation
 116
 117 Implement ‘package-cross-derivation’, and add the corresponding code in
 118 ‘gnu-build-system’.  Then, actually bootstrap a cross-compilation
 119 environment–e.g., a cross-GNU environment.
 120
 121 * add a guildhall build system
 122
 123 The Guildhall is Guile’s packaging system.  It should be easy to add a
 124 ‘guildhall-build-system’ that does the right thing based on guildhall
 125 recipes.
 126
 127 * gnu-build-system: produce a ‘debug’ derivation
 128
 129 Set a .gnu_debuglink in the main derivations to point to the sibling
 130 file name (only the basename, to not retain a dependency on the ‘debug’
 131 derivation.)
 132
 133 For /nix/store/xyz-foobar/bin/foo, we should have
 134 /nix/store/abc-foobar-debug/lib/nix/store/xyz-foobar/bin/foo.debug (info
 135 "(gdb) Separate Debug Files").
 136
 137 Users should have a default GDB setting with ~/.guix-profile/lib/debug
 138 as their ‘debug-file-directory’.
 139
 140 * build-expression->derivation: define `%system' in the builder
 141
 142 Would allow build expressions to have system-dependent code, like
 143 `glibc-dynamic-linker'.
 144
 145 * add ‘allowed-references’ in <package>
 146
 147 [[file:~/src/nix/src/libstore/build.cc::if%20(drv.env.find("allowedReferences")%20!%3D%20drv.env.end())%20{][See how Nix implements that internally]].
 148
 149 * union
 150
 151 Support sophisticated collision handling when building a union: check
 152 whether the colliding files are identical, honor per-package priorities,
 153 etc.
 154
 155 * guix-package
 156
 157 ** add ‘--list-generations’, and ‘--delete-generations’
 158 ** add ‘--upgrade’
 159 ** add ‘--search’
 160
 161 * guix build utils
 162 ** Add equivalent to "rm -rf"
 163 ** Add equivalent to Nixpkgs's ‘wrapProgram’
 164 ** Change ‘patch-shebang’ to DTRT for /usr/bin/env
 165
 166 I.e., replace “#!/usr/bin/env perl” by “#!/nix/store/…/bin/perl”.
 167
 168 ** MAYBE Change ‘ld-wrapper’ to add RPATH for libs passed by file name
 169
 170 ** MAYBE Add equivalent to chrpath, possibly using [[https://gitorious.org/guile-dlhacks/guile-dlhacks/][guile-dlhacks]]
 171
 172 ** MAYBE Add a hash-rewriting thing for deep dependency replacement without rebuild
 173
 174 See [[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commit/d1662d715514e6ef9d3dc29f132f1b3d8e608a18][Shea Levy's `replace-dependency' in Nixpkgs]].
 175
 176 * distro
 177 ** choose a name! (Jinn?)
 178 ** port to new GNU/Linux platforms, notably ‘mipsel64-linux’
 179 ** port to GNU/Hurd, aka. ‘i686-gnu’
 180
 181 Problems include that current glibc releases do not build on GNU/Hurd.
 182 In addition, there haven’t been stable releases of GNU Mach, MiG, and
 183 Hurd, which would be a pre-condition.
 184
 185 ** make a bootable GNU/Linux-Libre distro, with OS configuration EDSL
 186
 187 Similar in spirit to /etc/nixos/configuration.nix.