On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 10:59:17PM +0200, Ludovic Court??s wrote:
     > +    (arguments
     > +     `(#:phases
     > +       (alist-cons-before
     > +        'check 'pre-check
     > +        (lambda* (#:key inputs #:allow-other-keys #:rest args)
     > +          ;; This is needed, because without it, xmlint etc tries
     > +          ;; to download docbookx.dtd from the net
     > +          (setenv "XML_CATALOG_FILES" 
     > +                  (string-append (assoc-ref inputs "docbook-xml") 
     > +                                 "/xml/dtd/docbook/catalog.xml")))
     > +        %standard-phases)))
     >      (native-inputs
     >       `(("intltool" ,intltool)
     > +       ("docbook-xml" ,docbook-xml-4.4)
     
     We can???t copy that around forever.
     
     The problem is that ???search-path-specification??? is meant for $PATH-like
     variables that list directories, not files.

That occurred to me too.  But what problems does it actually cause?
     
     So I see two solutions:
     
       1. Patch libxml2 so that it honors a new variable, say
          $XML_CATALOG_DIRECTORIES, which would allow us to use
          ???search-path-specification???.
     
       2. Augment support for search paths to allow file-based search paths.
     
     (2) may be best in the long run, but it has ramifications in different
     places.
     

(1) seems like a good idea only if upstream can be persuaded to adopt it.

What are the ramifications of (2) ?


     

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