1 -*- mode: org; coding: utf-8; -*-
3 #+TITLE: What's left to do?
4 #+STARTUP: content hidestars
6 Copyright © 2012, 2013 Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>
8 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
9 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
10 notice and this notice are preserved.
12 * integrate needed Nix code
14 ** Remove dependency on OpenSSL
16 The ‘openssl’ command-line tool is used in libstore to sign store paths
17 to be exported, and to check such signatures. The signing keys are
18 usually in /etc/nix/signing-key.{pub,sec}. They are a PKCS#8-encoded
19 X.509 SubjectPublicKeyInfo. These can be decoded with the [[http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnutls/2012-12/msg00012.html][C API of
20 GnuTLS]], but not yet with its Guile bindings. There’s also
21 ‘gnutls_privkey_sign_data’ to sign, and related functions.
24 ** Add `guix publish' to publish the store using Guile's web server
26 Generate narinfos and nars on the fly, upon HTTP GET requests.
27 Ideally, extend .nix-cache-info to include the server's public key, and also
28 reply to requests for .narinfo.sig.
29 Optionally, use Guile-Avahi to publish the service.
31 ** MAYBE Add a substituter that uses the GNUnet DHT or [[http://libswift.org][libswift]]
33 Would be neat if binaries could be pushed to and pulled from the GNUnet DHT or
34 rather libswift (since DHTs aren’t suited for large payloads). Guix users
35 would sign their binaries, and define which binaries they trust.
37 Use UPnP and similar to traverse NAT, like ‘filegive’ does.
39 ** Add a remote build hook
41 Like scripts/build-remote.pl in Nix.
44 ** Add a package.el (Emacs) back-end
46 package.el is quite monolithic, but we may be able to reuse/extend
47 ‘package-menu-mode’ or at least ‘tabulated-list-mode’.
49 ** add guile-ncurses interface
52 ** add OpenPGP signatures:
56 (uri "http://.../foo.tgz")
57 (signature-uri (string-append uri ".sig"))
58 (signer-openpgp-fingerprint "..."))
60 ** allow <origin> to be a derivation/package or a file
64 ** add ‘recommends’ field
66 For instance, glibc, binutils, gcc, and ld-wrapper would recommend each other.
67 ‘guix package -i’ could ask interactively (?), or allow users to follow all or
68 none of the recommendations.
70 ** add a ‘user-environment-hook’
72 This should specify builder code to be run when building a user
73 environment with ‘guix-package’. For instance, Texinfo’s hook would
76 ** extend ‘propagated-build-inputs’ with support for multiple outputs
79 (outputs '("out" "include"))
80 (propagated-build-inputs
88 * synchronize package descriptions with GSRC and/or the [[http://directory.fsf.org][FSD]]
90 Meta-data for GNU packages, including descriptions and synopses, can be
92 http://directory.fsf.org/wiki?title=GNU/Export&action=purge .
93 We could periodically synchronize with that.
95 See http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-guix/2013-04/msg00120.html for info
96 on how to synchronize with GSRC's descriptions.
98 * add a guildhall build system
100 The Guildhall is Guile’s packaging system. It should be easy to add a
101 ‘guildhall-build-system’ that does the right thing based on guildhall
104 * build-expression->derivation: define `%system' in the builder
106 Would allow build expressions to have system-dependent code, like
107 `glibc-dynamic-linker'.
109 * add ‘allowed-references’ in <package>
111 [[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]].
115 Support sophisticated collision handling when building a union: check
116 whether the colliding files are identical, honor per-package priorities,
119 * add GUIX_ALLOW_EXPENSIVE_TESTS
121 Tests that need to download stuff or otherwise take a long time would only be
122 run when that is defined.
124 * add "guix challenge"
126 Would download a substitute, and compare its contents against a (hopefully
131 ** add ‘--list-generations’, and ‘--delete-generations’
134 ** MAYBE Change ‘ld-wrapper’ to add RPATH for libs passed by file name
136 ** MAYBE Add equivalent to chrpath that uses [[https://gitorious.org/guile-dlhacks/guile-dlhacks/][guile-dlhacks]]
138 ** MAYBE Add a hash-rewriting thing for deep dependency replacement without rebuild
140 See [[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commit/d1662d715514e6ef9d3dc29f132f1b3d8e608a18][Shea Levy's `replace-dependency' in Nixpkgs]].
143 ** port to new GNU/Linux platforms, notably ‘mipsel64-linux’
144 ** port to GNU/Hurd, aka. ‘i686-gnu’
146 Problems include that current glibc releases do not build on GNU/Hurd.
147 In addition, there haven’t been stable releases of GNU Mach, MiG, and
148 Hurd, which would be a pre-condition.
150 ** make a bootable GNU/Linux-Libre distro, with OS configuration EDSL
152 Similar in spirit to /etc/nixos/configuration.nix.