* The Perfect Setup

The manual mentions a "Perfect Setup" which is a rather pompous title
considering the many shortcomings it currently has! :)

Let's list the main pain points below and some suggestions on how to fix them.

** Too Emacsy

Most tools for hacking Guix imply the use of Emacs.  Even Guile-Studio is Emacs
under the hood.  This is the source of a few problems:

- Emacs has a steep learning curve which may overwhelm newcomers and thus deter
  Guix adoption.

- Non-Emacs users may want to stick to their favourite editor.

We need to work on integrating Guix with Vim, etc.

** Emacs-guix.el does not work with channels

https://github.com/alezost/guix.el/issues/34

** Recommended Emacs packages

We could add this to The Perfect Setup:

- Magit

- Yasnippet to automate the redaction of commit message.
  Add this to your Emacs config:

  #+begin_src elisp
  (when (require 'yasnippet nil 'noerror)
    (yas-global-mode 1)
    (add-to-list 'yas-snippet-dirs
                 (expand-file-name "etc/snippets" "~/projects/guix")))
  #+end_src

- guix.el
  Try the development commands as well as the log modes.

- Helm / Ivy with =imenu= (fixed in Emacs 27) to browse package definitions
  (fuzzy live search).

  Fix for Emacs <27 here: https://github.com/alezost/emacs-config

- engine-mode.el to browse the mailing lists from Emacs:

  #+begin_src elisp
(defun engine-eww-function (url &optional _)
  (interactive)
  (eww url))

(defengine guix-devel
  "https://lists.gnu.org/archive/cgi-bin/namazu.cgi?idxname=guix-devel&submit=Search&query=%s"
  :keybinding "gud"
  :browser 'engine-eww-function)

(defengine guix-help
  "https://lists.gnu.org/archive/cgi-bin/namazu.cgi?idxname=help-guix&submit=Search!&query=%s"
  :keybinding "guh"
  :browser 'engine-eww-function)
  #+end_src

- debbugs.el to browse and apply patches from Emacs.
  Try =debbugs-gnu-bugs= to go to a given bug number directly.
  Also try =debbugs-org= and the following snippet:

  #+begin_src elisp
(defun guix-debbugs-gnu (&optional severities packages archivedp suppress tags)
  "Like `debbugs-gnu' but for the Guix project."
  (interactive)
  (let ((debbugs-gnu-default-packages '("guix-patches" "guix")))
    (if (called-interactively-p)
        (call-interactively 'debbugs-gnu)
      (debbugs-gnu severities packages archivedp suppress tags))))
  #+end_src

  To apply patches, mark the corresponding emails then press press "|"
  (gnus-summary-pipe-output) and type =cd ~/guix && git am= (change the path as
  appropriate).

- Geiser for Guile hacking.  You need to tell Emacs to add the checkouts of Guix
  and the channels that you use in order to load hack a Guix-related module from
  the REPL.

  #+begin_src elisp
  (dolist (dir '("~/projects/guix" "~/projects/my-guix-channel"))
    (when (file-directory-p dir)
      (add-to-list 'geiser-guile-load-path dir)))
  #+end_src

  Geiser needs more work, in particular:

  https://gitlab.com/jaor/geiser/issues/293
  https://gitlab.com/jaor/geiser/issues/294
  https://gitlab.com/jaor/geiser/issues/295
  https://gitlab.com/jaor/geiser/issues/296

  Something that many Guix hackers didn't seem to know: on error you can display
  the backtrace with all local values for all the frames with

  #+begin_src scheme
  ,backtrace #:full? #t
  #+end_src

  or

  #+begin_src scheme
  ,bt #:full? #t
  #+end_src

  It's cumbersome to write though and it would be nicer to implement
  https://gitlab.com/jaor/geiser/issues/295.

- Paredit, Parinfer, Lispy, symex

  While =paredit= is the most famous package for enhanced Lisp editing, the
  other ones might be more modern and worth checking out.
  For instance, have a look at the demos for Lisp:

  https://github.com/abo-abo/lispy#demos

** Configuration sharing hub

We don't really have a way of sharing Guix tips and configurations.

For now, all we have is

- https://old.reddit.com/r/GUIX/
- https://gitlab.com/explore/projects?tag=guix
- https://github.com/topics/guix

** use-package.el Guix support

Currently Emacs' use-package.el installs from MELPA / ELPA when a package is
missing.
It would be nice to add a Guix backend so that the package is automatically
installed to the given profile when missing.

** Other considerations

Some remarks came up that are not directly related to the tooling.

*** Channel origin of a package

Currently there is no practical way to know from which channel a package comes.
We would need to add another field to =guix show= and =guix search=.