Moving general useful procedures to the utils-modules

Moving general useful procedures to the utils-modules

[swedebugia]

Hi

I found this in guix/build/cargo-build-system.scm:

(define (touch file-name)
   (call-with-output-file file-name (const #t)))

I think we should move useful ones like this to (build utils) and 
consider merging (build utils) and (import utils) into a single 
utils-module.

I think we should also consider factoring out some of these utils in a 
separate guix-utils library that can be used by other guile-projects 
WITHOUT depending on the whole of guix.

These steps makes it easier for newcomers to overview our many modules 
and use our very valuable tools.

-- 
Cheers Swedebugia

Re: Moving general useful procedures to the utils-modules

[Ricardo Wurmus]

swedebugia <swedebugia@riseup.net> writes:

> I found this in guix/build/cargo-build-system.scm:
>
> (define (touch file-name)
>   (call-with-output-file file-name (const #t)))
>
> I think we should move useful ones like this to (build utils) and
> consider merging (build utils) and (import utils) into a single
> utils-module.

While I agree that we should avoid duplication, note that (guix build
utils) is build-side code, so changing it causes rebuilds.

> I think we should also consider factoring out some of these utils in a
> separate guix-utils library that can be used by other guile-projects
> WITHOUT depending on the whole of guix.

(guix import utils) may not necessarily be useful.  I’m wary of packages
that provide “miscellaneous” tools and I think we should avoid that.
In more focused cases like the monads code I agree that it would be nice
to break these out into separate projects.

--
Ricardo