Re: Install hook

[Julien Lepiller <julien@lepiller.eu>]

I think install hooks are scripts run after each package installation,
that are provided by the package itself. We already have a similar
mechanism that takes place when building the user's profile. See
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/guix/profiles.scm.
For instance, we build a icon-theme.cache cache file for every icon
theme in the user's profile.

I have seen references to gschemas.compiled in our
gtk-or-glib-build-system. Currently we build the file in each package,
which means that only one version will be present in the user's profile
if they install more that one package containing this file. I believe
gschemas.compiled contains important information about some graphical
packages, and in our current system, only one package can be referenced
that way.

I think we should make sure that this file is never present in the
output of a package, and add a function to build it in profiles.scm.

Does it make any sense?

On Sun, 19 Mar 2017 12:23:39 +0100
John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au> wrote:

> I agree that this is a problem.  It has been discussed before, and
> various solutions have been suggested, but I don't think install
> hooks was one of them.
> 
> Can you elaborate on your idea?  What would an install hook do, and
> how would it work?