bug#53657: inconsistent parsing of the channel sexp's

bug#53657: inconsistent parsing of the channel sexp's

[Attila Lendvai]

pull.scm does this with channel files, e.g. with /etc/guix/channels.scm:

(load* file (make-user-module '((guix channels))))

i.e. this way field values are EVAL'd. beside the big can of worms that this opens up, it also means that e.g. the name field must be quoted: (name 'guix).

then at other occurrences of channels, an sexp parser is used to read them, e.g. in the 'dependencies field of a .guix-channel entry. see READ-CHANNEL-METADATA in guix/channels.scm.

here the name field is not EVAL'd, and thus it must be specified without quotes: (name guix).

this leads to an actual issue that channel dependencies don't match up, unless the name is without quotes in the dependencies list specification.

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• attila lendvai
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	— Adyashanti (1962–)

bug#53657: inconsistent parsing of the channel sexp's

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Thanks for the bug report.

I feel like I’m missing something here.

> this leads to an actual issue that channel dependencies don't match up,
> unless the name is without quotes in the dependencies list
> specification.

I don’t understand what it means for “channel dependencies” to “match
up”.  How is this an issue?

I’ll say that I agree that there’s an apparent inconsistency (as
evidenced also by commit 52e64b21be50e2c5febd7bf1accd88ffdc05a4bb, which
corrected a mistake in the documentation that used an explicit quote), I
just don’t see yet how it leads to a practical problem.

Could you please elaborate?

-- 
Ricardo

bug#53657: inconsistent parsing of the channel sexp's

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Attila Lendvai <attila@lendvai.name> skribis:

> pull.scm does this with channel files, e.g. with /etc/guix/channels.scm:
>
> (load* file (make-user-module '((guix channels))))
>
> i.e. this way field values are EVAL'd. beside the big can of worms that this opens up, it also means that e.g. the name field must be quoted: (name 'guix).
>
> then at other occurrences of channels, an sexp parser is used to read them, e.g. in the 'dependencies field of a .guix-channel entry. see READ-CHANNEL-METADATA in guix/channels.scm.
>
> here the name field is not EVAL'd, and thus it must be specified without quotes: (name guix).
>
> this leads to an actual issue that channel dependencies don't match up, unless the name is without quotes in the dependencies list specification.

Yes, but that’s okay: the ‘.guix-channel’ file has a syntax that looks
similar but is different from that of ‘~/.config/guix/channels.scm’, as
you explained (and as the manual explains, I think.)  This is on
purpose.

I understand it might look confusing but I’m not sure there’s much we
can do.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.