Re: Let's Package jQuery: A Javascript Packaging Dystopian Novella

[David Thompson <dthompson2@worcester.edu>]

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> skribis:
>
>> I'm not really sure what this means for Guix and libre web application
>> in the future.  I'd really like Guix to shine there... but this seems
>> like a tough thing to overcome.
>
> Well, presumably ‘guix import npm’ would be a first step (I hear Dave is
> motivated ;-)).
>
> But then, and that also applies to the other importers, we really need
> to think hard about updating already imported packages because nobody
> wants to update those 265 dependencies manually.
>
> Then again, I don’t know what the cost/benefit tradeoff is.  We get good
> integration, transactional upgrades, etc. if we have these Node and JS
> things available as Guix packages, but packaging and maintaining all
> that is an endless, huge endeavor...

That's true, but we can't hope to have reproducible web applications if
we just ignore npm.  IMO, we have to try, we have to come up with tools
to ease maintenance, and we have to do more outreach in the hopes that
we may convince *someone* outside of our circle that this work is
worthwhile.  Maybe it's hopeless, but web development is the industry
I've been in for my entire professional career (and it doesn't look like
that will change anytime soon) and I really want things to get better,
so I will continue to paddle against the current.

-- 
David Thompson
Web Developer - Free Software Foundation - http://fsf.org
GPG Key: 0FF1D807
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