How to use an inferior when input rewriting in GUIX?

Question

The GUIX Inferiors manual states that

Thus you can insert an inferior package pretty much anywhere you would insert a regular package: in manifests, in the packages field of your operating-system declaration, and so on.

However, I cannot figure out how to use an Inferior when rewriting the input of a package. E.g. this manifest, based on the Defining Package Variants section of the manual, does not work for me:

(use-modules (guix inferior) (guix channels) (guix packages)
             (srfi srfi-1))
(use-package-modules docker)
(use-package-modules python-xyz)

(define mychannels
  (list (channel
         (name 'guix)
         (url "https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git")
         ;; Last commit that still has python-pyyaml 5.4.1.
         (commit
          "d3e1a94391a838332b0565d56762a58cf87ac6b1"))))

(define myinferior
  (inferior-for-channels mychannels))

(define pyyaml5
  (first (lookup-inferior-packages myinferior "python-pyyaml")))


(define pyyaml5-instead-of-pyyaml6
  ;; This is a procedure to replace pyyaml 6.0 by pyyaml 5.4.1.

  ;; The line below does not work, raises this error:
  ;; In procedure package-properties: Wrong type argument:
  ;; #<inferior-package [email protected] 7f42653831b0>
  (package-input-rewriting `((,python-pyyaml . , pyyaml5)))

  ;; The line below does work (and has a similar result).
  ;(package-input-rewriting `((,python-pyyaml . , python-pyyaml-for-awscli)))
  )

(define docker-compose-with-pyyaml5
  (pyyaml5-instead-of-pyyaml6 docker-compose))

(packages->manifest
 (list pyyaml5
       (specification->package "python")
       docker-compose-with-pyyaml5
       ))

docker-compose only works with python-pyyaml 5.4.1 and the version in the channel has been upgraded to 6.0. The rewriting that I'm therefore trying to do is to rewrite the input to docker-compose to use python-pyyaml 5.4.1 from an earlier version of the channel. However, my attempts fail with

Backtrace:
In guix/packages.scm:
  1269:17 19 (supported-package? #<package [email protected] gu…> …)
In guix/memoization.scm:
    101:0 18 (_ #<hash-table 7fa05e6274c0 152/223> #<package docker…> …)
In guix/packages.scm:
  1247:37 17 (_)
  1507:16 16 (package->bag _ _ _ #:graft? _)
  1608:48 15 (thunk)
  1403:25 14 (inputs _)
In srfi/srfi-1.scm:
   586:29 13 (map1 (("python-cached-property" #<package python-…>) …))
   586:29 12 (map1 (("python-distro" #<package python-distro@1.…>) …))
   586:29 11 (map1 (("python-docker" #<package python-docker@5.…>) …))
   586:29 10 (map1 (("python-dockerpty" #<package python-docker…>) …))
   586:29  9 (map1 (("python-docopt" #<package python-docopt@0.…>) …))
   586:29  8 (map1 (("python-dotenv" #<package python-dotenv@0.…>) …))
   586:29  7 (map1 (("python-jsonschema" #<package python-jsons…>) …))
   586:17  6 (map1 (("python-pyyaml" #<package python-pyyaml@6.…>) …))
In guix/packages.scm:
  1360:20  5 (rewrite ("python-pyyaml" #<package [email protected]…>))
In guix/memoization.scm:
    101:0  4 (_ #<hash-table 7fa06ac0b540 8/31> #<package python-py…> …)
In guix/packages.scm:
  1377:22  3 (_)
  1435:37  2 (loop #<inferior-package [email protected] 7fa06304b3…>)
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 package-properties: Wrong type argument: #<inferior-package [email protected] 7fa06304b3f0>

How can I do this rewriting of input with an inferior?

Apparently there now is a python-pyyaml 5.4.1 in the channel, called python-pyyaml-for-awscli. Rewriting the input of docker-compose with that package does work as expected, so as far as I can see I'm using the correct syntax when rewriting input. (I'm not sure what the backtick, the dot, and the commas do, maybe there is a mistake there.)

(As for the XY-problem, I can now run docker-compose using python-pyaml-for-awscli, however I'm still interested in how to use the Inferior, because next there might not be such a package available.)

Answer 1

Apparently, there now is a modify-inputs function that is not yet in GUIX 1.3.0, and I don't know whether there is a 'nightly' documentation online to link to.

This works:

(use-modules (guix inferior) (guix channels) (guix packages)
             (srfi srfi-1))
(use-package-modules docker)
(use-package-modules python-xyz)

(define mychannels
  (list (channel
         (name 'guix)
         (url "https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git")
         ;; Last commit with pyyaml 5.4.1.
         (commit
          "d3e1a94391a838332b0565d56762a58cf87ac6b1"))))

(define myinferior
  (inferior-for-channels mychannels))

(define pyyaml5
  (first (lookup-inferior-packages myinferior "python-pyyaml")))


(define (also-pyyaml5-instead-of-pyyaml6 apackage)
  ;; This is a procedure to replace pyyaml 6.0 by pyyaml 5.4.1.
  (package
   (inherit apackage)
   (inputs
    (modify-inputs (package-inputs apackage)
                   (replace "python-pyyaml" pyyaml5)))))

(define also-docker-compose-with-pyyaml5
  (also-pyyaml5-instead-of-pyyaml6 docker-compose))

(packages->manifest
 (list python-pyyaml
       (specification->package "python")
       also-docker-compose-with-pyyaml5))

Now docker-compose uses version 5.4.1 of python-pyyaml, and the rest of the profile uses 6.0.

It is still not clear to me whether it is possible to use inferiors with package-input-rewriting, but using modify-inputs achieves the same thing, and it works.