Improve template distribution mechanism

[andrewdavidwong]

On 2016-12-23 02:49, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki wrote:

On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 11:56:13PM -0800, Andrew David Wong wrote:

On 2016-12-22 07:33, J. Eppler wrote:

1. How can I search for qubes-templates in dom0 rpm repository? The qubes-dom0-update tool excludes all templates from a search.

$ sudo qubes-dom0-update --action=search qubes-template

This will pass through the terminal output from the UpdateVM, so even
though templates are excluded in the dom0 dnf command, you'll still get
the search results (in red text by default).

Remember that you won't see community templates unless you enable their repo:

$ sudo qubes-dom0-update --enablerepo=qubes-templates-community --action=search qubes-template

Reading red text is not a really good solution from an usability perspective. What are the reasons to exclude templates from a search in the first place?

Actually, after further testing, I've found that this doesn't work. Even with --enablerepo=qubes-templates-community, I'm only getting the Fedora and Arch templates in search results (not Whonix or Debian). Without --enablerepo=qubes-templates-community, I only get the Fedora templates in the search results. So, this method doesn't work. Moreover, the results are inconsistent, since Debian is in the official templates-itl repo, whereas Arch is in the templates-community repo.

Marek, any idea what's going on here?

Already installed templates are excluded from every qubes-dom0-update
operation. Mostly to not accidentally upgrade such package - which would
override all the changes made inside (including installed packages,
applied updates etc). Currently the only exception is "reinstall"
action, with one specific template given as an argument. There is a plan
to extend this to some other actions:
#2527

But in general, we need some better mechanism to distribute templates,
this is one of the reasons...

[Jeeppler]

Guix is a functional transactional package manager and it can be installed besides any existing package manger on Linux. Guix is self contained and focuses on reproducible builds. I think Guix could be used, slightly modified (chroot in disposable vm), to manage template packages.

[Jeeppler]

Guix is a functional transactional package manager and it can be installed besides any existing package manger on Linux. Guix is self contained and focuses on reproducible builds. I think Guix could be used, slightly modified (chroot in disposable vm), to manage template packages.