I mean the working copy (the local directory) created by git clone.
>Looks like it's a huge effort.
Probably.
I've never used Dart in my life, so I don't have so much Dart-specific information, sorry.
> That Pull Request is adding Dart 2.8 while the current version is 3.1.5 (and it's released often, at least once a month). Most pub packages don't even work on Dart 2.x anymore.
Then as a next step you (or someone) would probably add another dart package for version 3, building it with Dart version 2 (is that how the dart build works? Probably).
>as I am using Guix OS (in a VM) and as far as I know there's no sources in it?
Just do the git clone. The guix package manager is a regular program (with source on git) like any other.
I always use a git clone of the guix master branch (for like 6 years now) and it was never a problem. But if you instead want to use the version used by your OS, do guix build -S guix . It will unpack the source of the current guix and tell you where it is. I wouldn't bother doing the latter though.
Also, basically there's a guix daemon that does the build container management (think of it as something like dockerd) and then there's the guix frontend. I'd never do "make install" in the guix working copy--so the guix daemon will not be fucked with. The ./pre-inst-env allows you to run the local directory guix frontend without installing it.
1. Git clone https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git
2. Nicolò Balzarotti already has a work in progress patchset adding Dart itself--see https://issues.guix.gnu.org/44926 . Patch your guix checkout with the files you can download on that page via the downarrow buttons on the right.
3. Create a file guix/build-system/dart.scm (I'd copy it from guix/build-system/dub.scm and then s/dub/dart/g and s/ldc/dartcc/g) or whatever it is. This file is the "front end" and is support for dart for the guix package manager script.
4. Create a file guix/build/dart-build-system.scm (I'd copy it from guix/build/dub-build-system.scm and then s/dub/dart/g). This file is the "back end" and is responsible for the build of your package inside a new container.
5. Add references to your new files to gnu/local.mk
6. In your user package script (whatever you want to compile in dart), add #:use-module (guix build-system dart) near the top and then add (build-system dart-build-system) to your package.
7. guix environment --pure guix
8. ./bootstrap
9. ./configure --localstatedir=/var
10. make -j5
11. exit
12. ./pre-inst-env guix build -f yourpackage.scm or whatever
13. Fiddle with the "invoke" parts in guix/build/dart-build-system.scm until your user package works.
14. Submit your results to [email protected] or [email protected] (no need to be subscribed).
As you can see, adding a new programming environment is quite some work. Because every programming environment has its own idiosyncracies, I don't think it can be avoided even in principle.