bug#28298: Downgrades in xfontsel and other packages using app-defaults

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hi Alex & John!

Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> skribis:

> John Darrington (2017-08-30 15:21 -0400) wrote:
>
>> It looks fine to me.  I don't get that warning.
>
> But did you actually tried what I wrote?:
>
>   $ `guix build xfontsel`/bin/xfontsel
>
>> The XAPPLRESDIR is no longer required because the libxt library has
>> been patched.
>
> Oh, I didn't know about this "libxt-guix-search-paths.patch".  I think
> now I understand: with this patch, xfontsel and other programs should
> work only when they are installed from the usual guix profiles (system
> and user ones), right?

Or when $GUIX_PROFILE is set, AIUI.

> In my opinion, this is the wrong approach.  A user may install these
> programs in non-standard profiles.  For example, I don't use
> "~/.guix-profile" at all; instead I use several other profiles, so there
> is no chance for me to have 'xfontsel' work properly.
>
> Also, I think a program should preferably work when it is started
> directly from store.

I agree, though that’s not always possible.

> So I strongly believe that using wrappers was the right approach, and we
> should return to it.

As a preamble, I think it’s not just “right” or “wrong”, it’s different
solutions making different tradeoffs.  :-)

IIRC I participated in the review of the libXt patch.  I don’t really
remember the discussion, but I think it would be good rereading it
before making a decision, to make sure we don’t run in circles.

Thanks for looking into it!

Ludo’.