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From: Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be>
To: Blake Shaw <blake@sweatshoppe.org>, Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net>
Cc: catonano@gmail.com, Andrew Tropin <andrew@trop.in>,
	Josselin Poiret <dev@jpoiret.xyz>,
	Guix Devel <guix-devel@gnu.org>,
	GNU Guix maintainers <guix-maintainers@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: how to write services (was: Re: Teams)
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2022 19:32:05 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <6aca367bce796a4856ef583cc65bfae22d946691.camel@telenet.be> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAKjmbcA+PNVCZRnp3oY+P4iAeu4pTvtwUMuVRYk_mFoJpO=jUQ@mail.gmail.com>

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2795 bytes --]

Blake Shaw schreef op wo 15-06-2022 om 17:01 [+0000]:
> Thats very good advice and will be a useful guide in refactoring the
> parts of the system services documentation. I think in general, we
> need to find a nice middle ground between the extremely general and
> the immediately sensible, as I remember when I first got into guix
> 1.5 years ago, arriving at services left me very confused. 

I don't doubt your confusal, though personally I'm confused on the
confusal and I think I would have been confused by ‘file AND file-like
object’.  Even more so since we both come from a mathematical
background, where AFAICT this kind of terminology and Guix'
interpretation is standard.

> mathematics I'm a fellow appreciator of the power of generality (the
> extreme genericity of scheme and guix is why I'm here!), I also think
> if it doesn't obey strict linguistic rules it can antithetical to its
> original purpose.

I don't see what linguistic rule the term ‘file-like object’ does not
follow.  

> For example, I remember being very confused about
> "file-like objects", for the simple reason that it wasn't "a file or
> file-like object". While this might come from a GNU terminological
> lineage i'm unaware of,

AFAIK no relation to GNU.

>  my immediate reaction to trying to understand
> file-likeness is the simple rule that a semblance is strictly not
> what it resembles, and likeness qualifies semblance. It would be
> improper to place phones in a category of "phone-like objects",
> because the likeness assumes a distinction from the thing itself.

An object being ‘X-like’ merely means that it is like an X.  This does
not imply it _isn't_ an X, only suggests that in some cases it might be
a non-X.

More concretely, to me phones resemble phones and are objects, so
phones are phone-like objects.

Summarised, to me semblance/similar/likeness is reflexive, I don't see
where the non-reflexivity would come from?

Something I dislike about the ‘file AND file-like objects’ construction
is that it suggests that files and file-like objects are separate and
are handled separately, whereas files (as in, 'local-file' or
'computed-file') are just another case of file-like objects to Guix
(next to 'file-append', 'package', 'git-checkout', ...).  Furthermore,
usually file-like objects aren't files but more often they are
packages.

For a comparison, suppose we have a hierarchy of concepts, e.g.

  {0}⊊ℕ⊊ℤ⊊ℚ⊊ℝ⊊ℂ

Whole numbers can (informally speaking) be considered to be natural-
like numbers. Yet, that doesn't make natural numbers non-whole. 
Compare:

File-like objects are objects that are like a file.  Yet, that doesn't
make files non-file-like.

Greetings,
Maxime.

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  reply	other threads:[~2022-06-15 17:32 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 62+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-06-04 12:07 Teams Ricardo Wurmus
2022-06-04 13:00 ` Teams Maxime Devos
2022-06-04 13:19 ` Teams Ekaitz Zarraga
2022-06-04 14:50 ` Teams Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2022-06-04 15:52   ` Teams Maxime Devos
2022-06-04 15:56   ` Teams david larsson
2022-06-05  9:10   ` Teams pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)
2022-06-07  4:11     ` Teams Thiago Jung Bauermann
2022-06-05  8:19 ` Teams Josselin Poiret
2022-06-06 21:21   ` Teams Ludovic Courtès
2022-06-14 11:31   ` Teams Andrew Tropin
2022-06-14 18:52     ` Teams Blake Shaw
2022-06-15  6:19       ` how to write services (was: Re: Teams) catonano
2022-06-15 13:53         ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-06-15 17:01           ` Blake Shaw
2022-06-15 17:32             ` Maxime Devos [this message]
     [not found]               ` <CAKjmbcA56WL8ude232fz_5_G9U2RfoNNf4gqMHu5tft5kMbjFQ@mail.gmail.com>
2022-06-15 22:04                 ` Maxime Devos
2022-06-15 22:13                 ` Maxime Devos
2022-06-15 22:28                 ` Maxime Devos
2022-06-15 23:20                   ` Blake Shaw
2022-06-16  8:27                     ` Maxime Devos
2022-06-16  5:14             ` catonano
2022-06-16  6:46               ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-06-16 13:09               ` Brian Cully via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.
2022-06-18 11:53                 ` how to write services indieterminacy
2022-06-18 12:23                   ` Maxime Devos
2022-06-18 13:33                     ` indieterminacy
2022-06-15 10:53       ` How to write a service (was: Re: Teams) catonano
2022-06-05  9:31 ` Teams Lars-Dominik Braun
2022-06-05  9:51 ` Teams zimoun
2022-06-05 10:00   ` Teams Julien Lepiller
2022-06-07 17:49   ` Teams Efraim Flashner
2022-06-05  9:51 ` Teams Andreas Enge
2022-06-09  4:39   ` Teams Eric Bavier
2022-06-05 10:30 ` Teams indieterminacy
2022-06-05 17:59 ` Teams Mathieu Othacehe
2022-06-06 21:26   ` Teams Ludovic Courtès
2022-06-06 14:12 ` Teams Maxim Cournoyer
2022-06-07  0:28 ` Teams Ryan Prior
2022-06-07 19:06 ` Teams Vagrant Cascadian
2022-06-08 21:30   ` Teams Ludovic Courtès
2022-06-09  2:21     ` Teams Thiago Jung Bauermann
2022-06-09 19:28 ` Teams Arun Isaac
2022-06-13 13:38   ` Teams Blake Shaw
2022-06-13 22:33     ` Teams raingloom
2022-06-21 15:21 ` Teams: first draft list zimoun
2022-06-21 17:28   ` bokr
2022-06-21 22:21     ` zimoun
2022-06-22  6:56       ` Efraim Flashner
2022-06-22 16:19         ` bokr
2022-06-22  7:59   ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-06-22  9:19     ` zimoun
2022-06-22 12:30       ` Josselin Poiret
2022-06-22 13:10         ` Maxime Devos
2022-06-22 13:49     ` Ludovic Courtès
2022-06-22 14:18       ` Blake Shaw
2022-07-01 10:28       ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-07-01 17:36         ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2022-07-01 19:08           ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-07-03 13:04             ` Teams: please add yourself to etc/teams.scm.in Ricardo Wurmus
2022-07-03 14:51               ` Andreas Enge
2022-07-01 20:53   ` Teams: first draft list Leo Famulari

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