Re: Scripting for installing a module

[Zelphir Kaltstahl <zelphirkaltstahl@posteo.de>]

On 7/2/22 10:46, James Crake-Merani wrote:
> On 22/07/02 09:11am, adriano wrote:
>> Il giorno ven, 01/07/2022 alle 18.15 +0100, James Crake-Merani ha
>> scritto:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I was just wondering what approach people tend to take when writing a
>>> script which installs a module onto the load-path. I understand this
>>> path might be different on different machines so how do you make sure
>>> the module is installed in the right path? Would you use something
>>> like a Makefile?
>> not only a Makefile
>>
>> The whole Autotools chain
>>
>> There are 2 options:
>>
>> 1) you write the config.am and Makefile.am (or however they're called)
>> by hand and you deal with the Autotools directly, by hand
>>
>> 2) You use guile-hall and it will wrap the Autotools making the
>> experience a bit less frustrating
>>
>>
>>
>> BUT
>>
>> I wonder: why you want to install your module ?
>>
>> You might want to distribute it as a simple handful of source files
>>
>> Guile will compile it automagically at need
>>
>> If your module has no dependencies, that could be an easy option
>>
>> If it _has_ dependencies, then the Autotools might be of help
>>
>> Did you think about this ?
>>
>> I hate to second guess your question
>>
>> I understand it might be perceived as rude and I'm sorry for that
>>
>> I just think these distinctions in use cases are not clear at all, in
>> the manual and in general
>>
>> So this could be an easy pitfall
> Hi,
>
> Don't worry, you didn't come across as rude at all. My use case was simply that I wrote some modules that I wanted to distribute, and I thought that if I'm going to distribute them, I probably ought to put some sort of script in so users can install them as well. The modules in question are just a simple project which tests your conformance to a certain political ideology (which is not sophisticated at all because it was more of a joke between friends that I thought would make a good programming exercise). After seeing Guile Hall recommended by yourself, and Jeremy I thought this might be appropriate. My modules have no dependencies aside from those already part of Guile although I do intend to write another module which will depend on the previous module.
>
> So if I were to take the latter approach of just distributing the source code then I presume users would have to load the file manually, or install it manually unless I'm missing something. In that case, I would've thought using something like Guile Hall would be more appropriate but again I might be missing something.
>
> I have just found the manual pages detailing Guile Hall which I was not originally aware of. After reading them, it does seem to me that Hall would be appropriate for this but of course I would be willing to hear about alternatives to distributing the code.
>
> Thanks for your response.

Hello James!

If your code is Guile code exclusively, then you might not need Guile Hall for 
packaging your code. You can make a GNU Guix package without Guile Hall. That is 
not to say, that Guile Hall does not work well, but I had a project, which I 
wanted to package and ultimately I did not want to depend on all the autotools 
machinery, which I do not understand. It has been a while, since I have packaged 
anything (I should really clean the repo a bit …), but the project I have is 
https://notabug.org/ZelphirKaltstahl/guile-fslib. I think tag 0.2.1 should 
contain a valid guix.scm. This repo also still has files from previous Guile 
Hall attempts. However, you might have to study the docs to get things working 
for your own project and how to test it with guix. I remember, that I used a VM 
for testing installation of the package. Somewhere I have a repository, which 
describes the process.

Regards,
Zelphir

-- 
repositories: https://notabug.org/ZelphirKaltstahl