bug#42164: Combining file-append with gexps results in incomprehensible errors

[Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be>]

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Brian Cully schreef op za 23-04-2022 om 12:03 [-0400]:
> 	I was having a similar issue, so I dug into this issue a bit,
> and it turns out that you *can* select an output from file-append, but
> the syntax is a bit wonky:
> 
> ---[snip]---
> (let ((fa (file-append pkg "/path")))
>   $~$#fa:output)
> ---[snip]---
> 
> 	I’ve tried to remove the let:
> 
> ---[snip]---
> $~$#(file-append pkg "/path"):output
> ---[snip]---

Do you mean #~#$fa:output here?

> 
> 	But this confuses the reader, an it things ‘:output’ is a
> variable. Not too surprising, but it does make the Guix configuration
> files more awkward, since now you have to ‘define’ the file-append
> operations at the top level so you can refer to them with the syntax
> above.
> 
> 	I would prefer to have something like any of the following (in
> order of preference):
> 
> ---[snip]---
> (file-append pkg:output "/path")

This one is only possible if file-append becomes syntax instead of a
procedure.

> (file-append (list pkg "output") "/path")

Possible, but seems semantically wrong to me -- what's a list doing in
a file-manipulating procedure?

> (file-append $~$#pkg:output "/path")

I assume this would be #~#$pkg:output?

My bikeshed proposal:

  (file-append (output glibc "static") "/lib/...")

Here, 'output' is a procedure constructing some kind of object.
This would also be useful outside 'file-append', as it allows
programmatically constructing equivalents #~#$pkg:output for multiple
'output' (there was some package definition some while back where this
would have been useful).

This 'output' could perhaps also be used in 'inputs' / 'native-inputs'
fields.  YMMV.

Greetings,
Maxime.

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