On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 01:03:38PM +0100, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> 
> > This could be solved by a new field in the package-record: (provides
> > '("list of commands provided"))
> 
> The danger with doing this in a package definition is that it can easily
> go out of sync unless we also add a verification phase to compare the
> output with the list of provided executables.  Another problem is that
> the list might not be complete and it is yet another manual thing to
> maintain for all packages.
> 
> Another approach is to shift this task to substitute servers.

This is Debian's aproach, with 'apt-file'. Another option that would
keep it more local would be a custom updatedb command that would look in
bin/sbin/libexec in the store for binaries and keep track of that. The
downside of course being that you'd only know about binaries you had in
your store.

> 
> > E.g. right now in my guixsd I have no "file" command. I have no idea
> > which package installs it. :p
> 
> The confusingly named “file” package provides the “file” executable ;)

This works for file, but it's not obvious that 'clear' is in ncurses.

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