website: drafts: Revise post on the Guix Data Service.
* website/drafts/guix-data-service-missing-blog-post.md: Update draft with some revisions.
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Christopher Baines
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title: Introduction to the Guix Data Service, the missing blog post
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date: 2020-11-01 12:00
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date: 2020-11-08 20:30
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author: Christopher Baines
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tags: Guix Data Service, Reproducible builds, Continuous integration
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---
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@ -13,14 +13,14 @@ related Outreachy project][outreachy-blog-post], this is the first
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blog post covering what is it and why it exists.
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[data-service.git]: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/data-service.git/
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[README]: http://data.guix.gnu.org/README
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[README]: https://data.guix.gnu.org/README
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[announcement]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-02/msg00089.html
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[outreachy-blog-post]: /en/blog/2020/improve-internationalization-support-for-the-guix-data-service/
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[outreachy-blog-post]: https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/improve-internationalization-support-for-the-guix-data-service/
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# Why?
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The initial motivation came from trying to automate aspects of
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reviewing patches for Guix. If you have some patches for Guix, oneq
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reviewing patches for Guix. If you have some patches for Guix, one
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aspect of review might be to apply the patches and then build the
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affected patches. How do you know what packages are affected though?
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@ -28,7 +28,10 @@ You could try and guess based on the content of the patches, and this
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could work some of the time, but because Guix packages relate to one
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another, changing one package may cause dependent packages to change.
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Additionally, there are places in Guix where small changes could
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affect a large number of packages, build systems for example.
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affect a large number of packages, build systems for example. The
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`guix refresh -l` command is really helpful when testing packages
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locally, but it can in some cases miss some packages that are effected
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by changes, as it only explores the package graph.
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The approach taken to working out what packages are affected by a set
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of patches, was to record information about all the packages in the
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@ -40,6 +43,8 @@ beyond finding out what packages are affected, and includes things
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like looking at changes to lint warnings, channel news entries, and
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more.
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[](https://data.guix.gnu.org/compare?base_commit=f503cfc9c51ea4ddd6cc9c027f1897e7866e411e&target_commit=f161bd2cd7af6a0a7027a2e4ed97912027d5033d)
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This approach of storing information about revisions has applications
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beyond reviewing patches, which is another reason why this approach
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was taken. While the Guix Data Service doesn't bring new knowledge to
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@ -55,19 +60,18 @@ because the Guix Data Service can store the available package names
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and versions in a range of revisions, it can provide this information
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more quickly and with less effort.
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[](https://data.guix.gnu.org/repository/1/branch/master/package/emacs)
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Now, questions about package versions is something a user of Guix
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might have. However, so far I haven't seen the Guix Data Service as
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something that users of Guix should necessarily use or be aware of.
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Instead, I think it has a place to provide information to enable
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things that users of Guix would directly use.
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I don't think there's a great example of something building on the
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Guix Data Service, but there are a few in varying states of
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development.
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I've been attempting to automate parts of a [weekly news publication
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about Guix][weekly-news] through using the Guix Data Service, I've
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also been writing a [service for building
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There are a few applications of data from the Guix Data Service in
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varying states of development. I've been attempting to automate parts
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of a [weekly news publication about Guix][weekly-news] through using
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the Guix Data Service, I've also been writing a [service for building
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derivations][guix-build-coordinator], which I've been using in
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conjunction with the Guix Data Service to provide substitutes. As
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part of an Outreachy internship on improving internationalisation
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@ -75,6 +79,8 @@ support in the Guix Data Service, Danjela worked on creating a package
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search page for the Guix website, which wrapped the package search
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functionality in the Guix Data Service.
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[](https://prototype-guix-weekly-news.cbaines.net/)
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[weekly-news]: https://git.cbaines.net/guix/weekly-news/
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[guix-build-coordinator]: https://git.cbaines.net/guix/build-coordinator/
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@ -85,11 +91,13 @@ up data about which packages in Guix don't build reproducibly.
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Hopefully the Guix Data Service is well positioned to help with
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technical questions like this.
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[](https://data.guix-patches.cbaines.net/repository/2/branch/master/latest-processed-revision/package-reproducibility)
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# Architecture
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The Guix Data Service is written in Guile, and uses PostgreSQL for the
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database. There's plenty of SQL queries, including some quite long
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ones in the code as well.
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database. There's plenty of SQL queries in the code, including some
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quite long ones.
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There are several scripts which act as entry points to different parts
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of the Guile codebase:
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@ -108,6 +116,11 @@ backing up the database, generating a minimal database which is
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hopefully small in size and querying build/substitute servers for
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information.
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When running on a Guix system, there's a [service to help with
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deployment][guix-manual-guix-data-service].
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[guix-manual-guix-data-service]: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Guix-Services.html#Guix-Data-Service
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# Getting information in
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Rather than polling the Git repository to find out about new
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@ -146,11 +159,14 @@ a long process to extract information about that revision of Guix, and
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store it in the database.
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The first part of this is to actually fetch and build the relevant
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revision. The Guix Data Service uses channels, the same code used by
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`guix pull` and `guix time-machine`, in conjunction with the `(guix
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inferior)` module for communication with another revision of Guix.
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It's through the inferior REPL that information from the target
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revision is extracted.
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revision. The Guix Data Service uses [channels][guix-manual-channels]
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and [inferiors][guix-manual-inferiors], the same code used by `guix
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pull` and `guix time-machine` for communication with another revision
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of Guix. It's through the inferior REPL that information from the
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target revision is extracted.
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[guix-manual-channels]: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Channels.html
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[guix-manual-inferiors]: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Inferiors.html
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In addition to receiving information about new revisions, the Guix
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Data Service can accept POST requests to receive information about
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@ -242,3 +258,22 @@ last two years, I've linked to most of these below:
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- [2019/05/06 - Linting, and how to get the information in to the Guix Data Serivce](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-05/msg00127.html)
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- [2019/04/04 - Progress with the Guix Data Service](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-04/msg00094.html)
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- [2019/02/08 - Tracking and inspecting how Guix changes over time](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-02/msg00089.html)
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#### About GNU Guix
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[GNU Guix](https://www.gnu.org/software/guix) is a transactional package
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manager and an advanced distribution of the GNU system that [respects
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user
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freedom](https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html).
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Guix can be used on top of any system running the Hurd or the Linux
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kernel, or it can be used as a standalone operating system distribution
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for i686, x86_64, ARMv7, and AArch64 machines.
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In addition to standard package management features, Guix supports
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transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management,
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per-user profiles, and garbage collection. When used as a standalone
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GNU/Linux distribution, Guix offers a declarative, stateless approach to
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operating system configuration management. Guix is highly customizable
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and hackable through [Guile](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile)
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programming interfaces and extensions to the
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[Scheme](http://schemers.org) language.
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