Hi Florian,

"pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> skribis:

> On Wed, Mar 06, 2019 at 02:17:49PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> Hi Florian,
>> 
>> "pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> skribis:
>> 
>> > The Guix manual contains the following description of gexp->file:
>> >
>> >  -- Monadic Procedure: gexp->file NAME EXP [#:set-load-path? #t]
>> >           [#:module-path %load-path]  [#:splice? #f]  [#:guile
>> >      (default-guile)] Return a derivation that builds a file NAME
>> >      containing EXP. When SPLICE? is true, EXP is considered to be a
>> >      list of expressions that will be spliced in the resulting file.
>> >
>> >      When SET-LOAD-PATH? is true, emit code in the resulting file to set
>> >      ‘%load-path’ and ‘%load-compiled-path’ to honor EXP’s imported
>> >      modules. Look up EXP’s modules in MODULE-PATH.
>> >
>> >      The resulting file holds references to all the dependencies of EXP
>> >      or a subset thereof.
>> >
>> > I do not understand this last sentence.  How can it be a subset?  A
>> > subset of what?  Can this be explained more clearly or removed?
>> 
>> It can be a subset of the references of EXP because, when a build
>> completes, the daemon scan the output(s) to determine the set of
>> residual references.  That’s the difference between build-time and
>> run-time dependencies.
>> 
>> For instance, ‘sed’ depends on ‘gcc’ and ‘gcc:lib’ at build time, but
>> its output depends only on ‘gcc:lib’.
>> 
>> Does that make sense?
>> 
>> Ludo’.
>
> Thank you.  I did not know this is how the daemon determines outputs’
> references.  In this case I would understand the manual more easily if
> it said:
>
> The output(s) resulting from this derivation will be scanned for
> references by the daemon.  They can hold references to all the
> dependencies of EXP or a subset thereof.
>
> Please make this more clear in the manual.

The explanation isn’t specific to ‘gexp->file’ so I’ve added the
following text under “Derivations”.

Thanks,
Ludo’.