On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 12:12:25AM -0400, Leo Famulari wrote:
> This problem with the wrong number of arguments being passed to
> parse_media() is introduced in the Debian patch, so we should check if
> there is a better version of the patch or if fixes are being applied
> upstream.

Actually, the first issue is that the patch doesn't apply to the source
fully. I tried a later patch from Debian, but it also doesn't apply. I
haven't been able to try fetching a later revision of the net-tools Git
repo, because I first have to make Git not depend on net-tools.

This patch will try to apply the patch and handle the exit codes of
gunzip and patch correctly:

diff --git a/gnu/packages/linux.scm b/gnu/packages/linux.scm
index 456909a94..cab6abb32 100644
--- a/gnu/packages/linux.scm
+++ b/gnu/packages/linux.scm
@@ -1220,14 +1217,15 @@ messages and are accompanied by a set of manpages.")
                      (zero? (system* "patch" "-p1" "--force"
                                      "--input" file)))
 
-                   (let ((patch.gz (assoc-ref inputs "patch")))
+                   (let ((patch.gz (assoc-ref inputs "debian-patch")))
                      (format #t "applying Debian patch set '~a'...~%"
                              patch.gz)
-                     (system (string-append "gunzip < " patch.gz " > the-patch"))
-                     (and (apply-patch "the-patch")
-                          (for-each apply-patch
-                                    (find-files "debian/patches"
-                                                "\\.patch")))))
+                     (and
+                       (zero? (system (string-append "gunzip < " patch.gz " > debian-patch")))
+                       (and (apply-patch "debian-patch")
+                            (every apply-patch
+                                      (find-files "debian/patches"
+                                                  "\\.patch"))))))
                  (alist-replace
                   'configure
                   (lambda* (#:key outputs #:allow-other-keys)
@@ -1270,7 +1268,7 @@ messages and are accompanied by a set of manpages.")
 
     ;; Use the big Debian patch set (the thing does not even compile out of
     ;; the box.)
-    (inputs `(("patch" ,(origin
+    (inputs `(("debian-patch" ,(origin
                          (method url-fetch)
                          (uri
                           "http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/n/net-tools/net-tools_1.60-24.2.diff.gz")