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 ** Remove dependency on OpenSSL
  12
  13 The ‘openssl’ command-line tool is used in libstore to sign store paths
  14 to be exported, and to check such signatures.  The signing keys are
  15 usually in /etc/nix/signing-key.{pub,sec}.  They are a PKCS#8-encoded
  16 X.509 SubjectPublicKeyInfo.  These can be decoded with the [[http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnutls/2012-12/msg00012.html][C API of
  17 GnuTLS]], but not yet with its Guile bindings.  There’s also
  18 ‘gnutls_privkey_sign_data’ to sign, and related functions.
  19
  20
  21 ** Add `guix publish' to publish the store using Guile's web server
  22
  23 Generate narinfos and nars on the fly, upon HTTP GET requests.
  24 Ideally, extend .nix-cache-info to include the server's public key, and also
  25 reply to requests for .narinfo.sig.
  26 Optionally, use Guile-Avahi to publish the service.
  27
  28 ** MAYBE Add a substituter that uses the GNUnet DHT
  29
  30 Would be neat if binaries could be pushed to and pulled from the GNUnet
  31 DHT.  Guix users would sign their binaries, and define which binaries
  32 they trust.
  33
  34 ** Add a remote build hook
  35
  36 Like scripts/build-remote.pl in Nix.
  37
  38 * infrastructure
  39
  40 ** have a Hydra instance build Guix packages
  41
  42 [[http://nixos.org/hydra/][Hydra]] is a continuous integration tool based on Nix.  It now has
  43 [[https://github.com/NixOS/hydra/commit/f27ae1d5663680400cb99cfb898970f34d8d21be][Guile/Guix support]], which allows “build recipes” written in Guile using
  44 Guix to be used directly on Hydra.
  45
  46 For a start, we may use the instance at hydra.nixos.org, generously
  47 provided by TU Delft.  However, in the future, we may want to setup our
  48 own instance at gnu.org.
  49
  50 * user interface
  51 ** Add a package.el (Emacs) back-end
  52
  53 Unfortunately package.el is monolithic, so most likely we’d have to
  54 write a new one based on it, as opposed to actually using it.
  55
  56 * extend <origin>
  57 ** add OpenPGP signatures:
  58
  59    (origin
  60      (method http-fetch)
  61      (uri "http://.../foo.tgz")
  62      (signature-uri (string-append uri ".sig"))
  63      (signer-openpgp-fingerprint "..."))
  64
  65 ** allow <origin> to be a derivation/package or a file
  66
  67 * extend <package>
  68
  69 ** add support for ‘search-paths’
  70
  71 This should be passed to the build system, to extend package-specific
  72 search path environment variables–like ‘GUILE_LOAD_PATH’, ‘PERL5LIB’,
  73 etc.
  74
  75 ** add a ‘user-environment-hook’
  76
  77 This should specify builder code to be run when building a user
  78 environment with ‘guix-package’.  For instance, Texinfo’s hook would
  79 create a new ‘dir’.
  80
  81 ** add ‘patches’ there
  82
  83 ** extend ‘propagated-build-inputs’ with support for multiple outputs
  84
  85 #+BEGIN_SRC scheme
  86   (outputs '("out" "include"))
  87   (propagated-build-inputs
  88     `(((("i1" ,p1 "o1")
  89         ("i2" ,p2))
  90        => "include")
  91       ("i3" ,p3)))
  92 #+END_SRC
  93
  94 * synchronize package descriptions with the [[http://directory.fsf.org][FSD]] and/or the Womb
  95
  96 Meta-data for GNU packages, including descriptions and synopses, can be
  97 dumped from the FSD:
  98 http://directory.fsf.org/wiki?title=GNU/Export&action=purge .
  99 We could periodically synchronize with that.
 100
 101 The [[./guix/gnu-maintenance.scm][Womb]] also contains synopses for all the GNU packages.
 102
 103 * support cross-compilation
 104
 105 Implement ‘package-cross-derivation’, and add the corresponding code in
 106 ‘gnu-build-system’.  Then, actually bootstrap a cross-compilation
 107 environment–e.g., a cross-GNU environment.
 108
 109 * add a guildhall build system
 110
 111 The Guildhall is Guile’s packaging system.  It should be easy to add a
 112 ‘guildhall-build-system’ that does the right thing based on guildhall
 113 recipes.
 114
 115 * gnu-build-system: produce a ‘debug’ derivation
 116
 117 Set a .gnu_debuglink in the main derivations to point to the sibling
 118 file name (only the basename, to not retain a dependency on the ‘debug’
 119 derivation.)
 120
 121 For /nix/store/xyz-foobar/bin/foo, we should have
 122 /nix/store/abc-foobar-debug/lib/nix/store/xyz-foobar/bin/foo.debug (info
 123 "(gdb) Separate Debug Files").
 124
 125 Users should have a default GDB setting with ~/.guix-profile/lib/debug
 126 as their ‘debug-file-directory’.
 127
 128 * build-expression->derivation: define `%system' in the builder
 129
 130 Would allow build expressions to have system-dependent code, like
 131 `glibc-dynamic-linker'.
 132
 133 * add ‘allowed-references’ in <package>
 134
 135 [[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]].
 136
 137 * union
 138
 139 Support sophisticated collision handling when building a union: check
 140 whether the colliding files are identical, honor per-package priorities,
 141 etc.
 142
 143 * guix package
 144
 145 ** add ‘--list-generations’, and ‘--delete-generations’
 146
 147 * guix build utils
 148 ** Add equivalent to Nixpkgs's ‘wrapProgram’
 149 ** MAYBE Change ‘ld-wrapper’ to add RPATH for libs passed by file name
 150
 151 ** MAYBE Add equivalent to chrpath, possibly using [[https://gitorious.org/guile-dlhacks/guile-dlhacks/][guile-dlhacks]]
 152
 153 ** MAYBE Add a hash-rewriting thing for deep dependency replacement without rebuild
 154
 155 See [[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commit/d1662d715514e6ef9d3dc29f132f1b3d8e608a18][Shea Levy's `replace-dependency' in Nixpkgs]].
 156
 157 * distro
 158 ** port to new GNU/Linux platforms, notably ‘mipsel64-linux’
 159 ** port to GNU/Hurd, aka. ‘i686-gnu’
 160
 161 Problems include that current glibc releases do not build on GNU/Hurd.
 162 In addition, there haven’t been stable releases of GNU Mach, MiG, and
 163 Hurd, which would be a pre-condition.
 164
 165 ** make a bootable GNU/Linux-Libre distro, with OS configuration EDSL
 166
 167 Similar in spirit to /etc/nixos/configuration.nix.