To: Amr Stite <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: A Guix extension for package version history, built
on the Data Service
From: Ricardo Wurmus <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:10:44 +0200
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Hi Amr,
I wrapped up a three-month internship at Inria Bordeaux's SED a
month ago, under Ludovic Courtès and Sergio Pastor Perez.
Congratulations on the successful internship!
The project: a Guix command built on top of the Data Service, to
answer two things. First, which commits had a given version of a
given
package. Second, and more generally, which commits had several
specific package versions available at the same time, not
limited to
two packages.
https://codeberg.org/guix-extensions/package-version-history
I've attached the internship report, which walks through the
approach,
the choices made along the way, and a data consistency quirk I
ran
into with coexisting package definitions during version
transitions.
This is great! I've often been wishing for an extension like
this. It greatly enhances access to version history to people who
feel that cloning the git repository and manually searching the
logs is a step too far. I've often had to offer a version search
as a service to users I used to support. I hope that this
extension can help these users take the next steps towards full
autonomy.
Ludovic thought this might be worth posting here given how
little-known the Data Service still seems to be outside the
people who
built it. Feedback and questions welcome.
I haven't yet read it, but I fully agree with Ludovic: the
publication of this report here is very welcome and I'm happy to
have something interesting to read soon :)
Thank you!
--
Ricardo
