Subject: Re: bug#36855: guix system switch-generation doesn't

From: [email-masked] (Jakob L. Kreuze)
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 20:08:19 -0400

Hi Mark,

Mark H Weaver <[email-masked]> writes:

> Hi Jakob,
>
> [email-masked] (Jakob L. Kreuze) writes:
>
>> Thanks for the input; I wasn't aware that the activation process was
>> taking so long for some people. One of Ludovic's suggestions was to
>> create a single derivation, rather than three, to speed up system
>> activation. I'll look into this further.
>
> To be clear, I don't care how long it takes to build these
> derivations. However, I think they should all be built before starting
> to activate the system. Does that make sense?

Yes, and I agree that it would be ideal to have the derivations built
prior to system activation -- that way, the activation scripts could be
included in 'show-what-to-build*'.

> On a side note, what would happen if one of those builds failed? Would
> the system activation be left half-done?

Yes. You raise another very good reason for why system activation should
be carried out by a single, atomic activation script :)

Regards,
Jakob