One guix deployment

2 files changed, 39 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/topics/guix/genenetwork-fixating-guix.gmi b/topics/guix/genenetwork-fixating-guix.gmi
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..844b0fd6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/topics/guix/genenetwork-fixating-guix.gmi
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+# Fixating Guix for GN
+
+The GeneNetwork services depend on a rather complicated Guix deployment. The problem is not guix, but GN itself :)
+But we were getting bitten by updates on upstream, as well as updates on our different targets/services.
+
+# Using channels that affect GN production
+
+To avoid duplication of work and unknown rabbit holes we decided to fixate guix trunk and other dependencies by using Guix channels. This means all GN development happens on a single version of Guix! That version is defined here:
+
+=> https://git.genenetwork.org/gn-machines/tree/.guix-channel
+
+Note that guix-forge and guix-bioinformatics are *also* fixated. The idea is that we only upgrade GN packages in gn-machines itself by inheriting definitions. E.g.
+
+=> https://git.genenetwork.org/gn-machines/tree/guix/gn-machines/genenetwork.scm
+
+We will probably get rid of the guix-past and guix-rust-past-crates sub-channels soon by removing those packages that depend on those (genenetwork1 will get its own tree, and @alexm will upgrade the rust packages).
+
+If someone wants to update guix channel or guix-bioinformatics channel they should not update this file. The one in charge is @fredm. Fred has to be in control because we don't want to break production. It is forbidden to touch this channel file.
+
+People can patch the packages and gn-machines, but if it involves CI/CD and/or production in any way, Fred will have to know about it.
+
+# Service level channels
+
+For individual services, such as genenetwork2, genenetwork3, gn-auth, etc., we have local channel files. These should mirror above gn-machines channel file to make sure we can migrate your code easily. E.g.
+
+=> https://github.com/genenetwork/genenetwork3/blob/main/.guix-channel
+
+Should match
+
+=> https://git.genenetwork.org/gn-machines/tree/.guix-channel
+
+If that is not the case we have a major problem! So before sending patches to Fred make sure the channels match.
+
+To be honest, I think we should fetch these channels automagically from gn-machines as a first step.
diff --git a/topics/guix/packages.gmi b/topics/guix/packages.gmi
index fc7f808f..b4a393cc 100644
--- a/topics/guix/packages.gmi
+++ b/topics/guix/packages.gmi
@@ -2,6 +2,10 @@
 
 To deploy GN we have packages in Guix itself (that comes with a distribution), in guix-bioinformatics and in guix-past (for older packages).
 
+When you develop a new package it is best to run against a recent version of guix. Note that with GeneNetwork this is different as we 'fixate' guix at an older version. See
+
+=> genenetwork-fixating-guix
+
 Typically run a guix pull to get the latest guix:
 
 ```
@@ -28,7 +32,7 @@ genenetwork2            3.11-2.1328932  out     /home/wrk/guix-bioinformatics/gn
 genenetwork3            0.1.0-2.e781996 out     /home/wrk/guix-bioinformatics/gn/packages/genenetwork.scm:107:4
 ```
 
-and we can try building
+note that using the -L switch is a bit of a hack. Normally we use channels. We can try building
 
 ```
 ~/opt/guix-pull/bin/guix build -L ~/guix-bioinformatics/ -L ~/guix-past/modules/ genenetwork2