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doc: cookbook: Suggest ‘guix shell’ as an alternative to multiple profiles.

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Multiple profiles are relatively hard to set up and maintain, especially
for newcomers.  Thus, suggest ‘guix shell’ as an alternative.

* doc/guix-cookbook.texi (Guix Profiles in Practice): Add note
linking to ‘guix shell’.
(The benefits of manifests): Remove outdated info about ‘guix
environment’ and profiles that may be GC’d.  Update.
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Ludovic Courtès 2023-10-16 14:19:59 +02:00
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doc/guix-cookbook.texi
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@ -3714,7 +3714,7 @@ reference.
@section Guix Profiles in Practice @section Guix Profiles in Practice
Guix provides a very useful feature that may be quite foreign to newcomers: Guix provides a very useful feature that may be quite foreign to newcomers:
@emph{profiles}. They are a way to group package installations together and all users @dfn{profiles}. They are a way to group package installations together and all users
on the same system are free to use as many profiles as they want. on the same system are free to use as many profiles as they want.
Whether you're a developer or not, you may find that multiple profiles bring you Whether you're a developer or not, you may find that multiple profiles bring you
@ -3722,6 +3722,16 @@ great power and flexibility. While they shift the paradigm somewhat compared to
@emph{traditional package managers}, they are very convenient to use once you've @emph{traditional package managers}, they are very convenient to use once you've
understood how to set them up. understood how to set them up.
@quotation Note
This section is an opinionated guide on the use of multiple profiles.
It predates @command{guix shell} and its fast profile cache
(@pxref{Invoking guix shell,,, guix, GNU Guix Reference Manual}).
In many cases, you may find that using @command{guix shell} to set up
the environment you need, when you need it, is less work that
maintaining a dedicated profile. Your call!
@end quotation
If you are familiar with Python's @samp{virtualenv}, you can think of a profile as a If you are familiar with Python's @samp{virtualenv}, you can think of a profile as a
kind of universal @samp{virtualenv} that can hold any kind of software whatsoever, not kind of universal @samp{virtualenv} that can hold any kind of software whatsoever, not
just Python software. Furthermore, profiles are self-sufficient: they capture just Python software. Furthermore, profiles are self-sufficient: they capture
@ -4034,29 +4044,12 @@ profiles, they are not strictly equivalent: profiles have the side effect that
they ``pin'' packages in the store, which prevents them from being they ``pin'' packages in the store, which prevents them from being
garbage-collected (@pxref{Invoking guix gc,,, guix, GNU Guix Reference Manual}) garbage-collected (@pxref{Invoking guix gc,,, guix, GNU Guix Reference Manual})
and ensures that they will still be available at any point in and ensures that they will still be available at any point in
the future. the future. The @command{guix shell} command also protects
recently-used profiles from garbage collection; profiles that have not
been used for a while may be garbage-collected though, along with the
packages they refer to.
Let's take an example: To be 100% sure that a given profile will never be collected,
@enumerate
@item
We have an environment for hacking on a project for which there isn't a Guix
package yet. We build the environment using a manifest, and then run @code{guix
environment -m manifest.scm}. So far so good.
@item
Many weeks pass and we have run a couple of @code{guix pull} in the mean time.
Maybe a dependency from our manifest has been updated; or we may have run
@code{guix gc} and some packages needed by our manifest have been
garbage-collected.
@item
Eventually, we set to work on that project again, so we run @code{guix shell
-m manifest.scm}. But now we have to wait for Guix to build and install
stuff!
@end enumerate
Ideally, we could spare the rebuild time. And indeed we can, all we need is to
install the manifest to a profile and use @code{GUIX_PROFILE=/the/profile; install the manifest to a profile and use @code{GUIX_PROFILE=/the/profile;
. "$GUIX_PROFILE"/etc/profile} as explained above: this guarantees that our . "$GUIX_PROFILE"/etc/profile} as explained above: this guarantees that our
hacking environment will be available at all times. hacking environment will be available at all times.