A day ago I found out that I can't pull/time-machine from my local guix repo with patches. After running guix time-machine -C ./channels ..., guix reported the following: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- Updating channel 'guix' from Git repository at 'https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git'... guix time-machine: warning: channel authentication disabled Computing Guix derivation for 'x86_64-linux'... - Backtrace: 18 (primitive-load "/home/bob/.config/guix/current/bin/guix") In guix/ui.scm: 2206:7 17 (run-guix . _) 2169:10 16 (run-guix-command _ . _) In ice-9/boot-9.scm: 1752:10 15 (with-exception-handler _ _ #:unwind? _ #:unwind-for-type _) 1747:15 14 (with-exception-handler # …) In guix/store.scm: 671:3 13 (_) In ice-9/boot-9.scm: 1752:10 12 (with-exception-handler _ _ #:unwind? _ #:unwind-for-type _) In guix/store.scm: 658:37 11 (thunk) In guix/status.scm: 802:4 10 (call-with-status-report _ _) In guix/store.scm: 1320:8 9 (call-with-build-handler _ _) 1320:8 8 (call-with-build-handler # …) 2123:24 7 (run-with-store # _ # _ # _ # …) In guix/inferior.scm: 817:16 6 (_ _) In guix/store.scm: 1995:38 5 (_ #) 1468:0 4 (add-temp-root # #) In guix/serialization.scm: 130:20 3 (write-store-path # …) In unknown file: 2 (string->utf8 #) In ice-9/boot-9.scm: 1685:16 1 (raise-exception _ #:continuable? _) 1685:16 0 (raise-exception _ #:continuable? _) ice-9/boot-9.scm:1685:16: In procedure raise-exception: In procedure string->utf8: Wrong type argument in position 1 (expecting string): # /gnu/store/3hc33q0xlajd75l52grsg8dg1ais2hss-profile 7f66cb7eaeb0> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Later I discovered, that the problem isn't related to my local changes, it reproduces with main guix channel too, also, other people on their setups reporting the same problem. Way to reproduce: 1. Find any commit you didn't built guix for earlier. For example a79ad5fce5. 2.1 Update guix to the latest version and do describe under time-machine: guix pull && guix time-machine --commit=a79ad5fce5 --disable-authentication -- describe 2.2 or more preciese and less invasive alternative: guix time-machine --commit=0f869287ebf -- time-machine --commit=a79ad5fce5 --disable-authentication -- describe To be sure, I tried it on a separate machine with only guix channel, which wasn't updated for a while. 2.2 failed the same way as described at the beginning, but when I tried just: guix time-machine --commit=a79ad5fce5 --disable-authentication -- describe it worked. Also, I did similiar test like in 2.1 with guix pull and after that guix pull --roll-back, the result is the same. Skimming throught the latest changes didn't bring any results yet. Bisecting and building guix, will let you know, if/when I find more. -- Best regards, Andrew Tropin