1 -*- mode: org; coding: utf-8; -*-
3 Copyright © 2012, 2013 Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>
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.
9 * integrate needed Nix code
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.
17 ** Remove dependency on OpenSSL
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.
26 ** Add a binary cache substituter
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.
32 ** MAYBE Add a substituter that uses the GNUnet DHT
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
38 ** Add a remote build hook
40 Like scripts/build-remote.pl in Nix.
44 ** have a Hydra instance build Guix packages
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.
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.
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
63 ** Add a package.el (Emacs) back-end
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.
69 ** add OpenPGP signatures:
73 (uri "http://.../foo.tgz")
74 (signature-uri (string-append uri ".sig"))
75 (signer-openpgp-fingerprint "..."))
77 ** allow <origin> to be a derivation/package or a file
81 ** add support for ‘search-paths’
83 This should be passed to the build system, to extend package-specific
84 search path environment variables–like ‘GUILE_LOAD_PATH’, ‘PERL5LIB’,
87 ** add a ‘user-environment-hook’
89 This should specify builder code to be run when building a user
90 environment with ‘guix-package’. For instance, Texinfo’s hook would
93 ** add ‘patches’ there
95 ** extend ‘propagated-build-inputs’ with support for multiple outputs
98 (outputs '("out" "include"))
99 (propagated-build-inputs
106 * support cross-compilation
108 Implement ‘package-cross-derivation’, and add the corresponding code in
109 ‘gnu-build-system’. Then, actually bootstrap a cross-compilation
110 environment–e.g., a cross-GNU environment.
112 * add a guildhall build system
114 The Guildhall is Guile’s packaging system. It should be easy to add a
115 ‘guildhall-build-system’ that does the right thing based on guildhall
118 * gnu-build-system: produce a ‘debug’ derivation
120 Set a .gnu_debuglink in the main derivations to point to the sibling
121 file name (only the basename, to not retain a dependency on the ‘debug’
124 For /nix/store/xyz-foobar/bin/foo, we should have
125 /nix/store/abc-foobar-debug/lib/nix/store/xyz-foobar/bin/foo.debug (info
126 "(gdb) Separate Debug Files").
128 Users should have a default GDB setting with ~/.guix-profile/lib/debug
129 as their ‘debug-file-directory’.
131 * build-expression->derivation: define `%system' in the builder
133 Would allow build expressions to have system-dependent code, like
134 `glibc-dynamic-linker'.
136 * add ‘allowed-references’ in <package>
138 [[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]].
142 Support sophisticated collision handling when building a union: check
143 whether the colliding files are identical, honor per-package priorities,
149 ** add ‘--list-generations’, and ‘--delete-generations’
154 ** Add equivalent to "rm -rf"
155 ** Add equivalent to Nixpkgs's ‘wrapProgram’
156 ** Add equivalent to chrpath, possibly using [[https://gitorious.org/guile-dlhacks/guile-dlhacks/][guile-dlhacks]]
158 ** Add a hash-rewriting thing for deep dependency replacement without rebuild
160 See [[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commit/d1662d715514e6ef9d3dc29f132f1b3d8e608a18][Shea Levy's `replace-dependency' in Nixpkgs]].
163 ** choose a name! (Jinn?)
164 ** port to new GNU/Linux platforms, notably ‘mipsel64-linux’
165 ** port to GNU/Hurd, aka. ‘i686-gnu’
167 Problems include that current glibc releases do not build on GNU/Hurd.
168 In addition, there haven’t been stable releases of GNU Mach, MiG, and
169 Hurd, which would be a pre-condition.
171 ** make a bootable GNU/Linux-Libre distro, with OS configuration EDSL
173 Similar in spirit to /etc/nixos/configuration.nix.