From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ricardo Wurmus Subject: Re: Release! Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2017 23:30:31 +0200 Message-ID: <878tgmodc8.fsf@elephly.net> References: <877f16z9eo.fsf@gnu.org> <87infv54m3.fsf@gnu.org> <87efqgnn7x.fsf@elephly.net> <20171006203129.526f7d09@capac> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:58029) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e0wgX-0008Sd-Nz for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 07 Oct 2017 17:31:02 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e0wgT-0008DN-LP for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 07 Oct 2017 17:31:01 -0400 Received: from sender-of-o51.zoho.com ([135.84.80.216]:21134) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e0wgT-0008Cj-Dd for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 07 Oct 2017 17:30:57 -0400 In-reply-to: <20171006203129.526f7d09@capac> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: David Pirotte Cc: guix-devel , Andy Wingo Hi David, >> >> • Merge the potluck! > >> About that… We now have a JSON importer, so maybe it’s worth using the >> even simpler JSON package format instead of the simplified S-expression >> format that Andy proposed. What do you think? Should we discuss this >> at ? > > FWIW, I much prefer s-exp, and the generated file is a scheme file right? I very > much doubt guix and potluck package developers can't easily read (and write :)) > s-exp, so why would we 'abandon' s-exp, what would we win here? These files will > never be processed by anything else but guix and/or potluck, and the 'package > developers' do all know scheme perfectly well... I’m not saying that JSON is “better” than s-exps. Part of the potluck effort as I understood it is to simplify packaging. The potluck package definition is strictly simpler than Guix package definitions in that there’s less boilerplate and inputs are really just strings. Taking that aspect of simplifying packaging even farther we can reduce the syntax even more. The target audience here has little overlap with Guix developers. Guix won’t adopt JSON as a packaging format; that’s not what this is about. The goal I had in mind when I worked on the JSON importer was to make packaging even simpler for people who don’t really care all that much about packaging — if they did they would probably want to learn about how to contribute to Guix, and thus would want to learn the S-expr syntax we use in Guix. There are users of Guix who benefit from its features as a personal package manager. Users can already add their own packages via GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH. We support those who don’t feel comfortable writing Scheme by offering a JSON importer; with just a minor change to “guix build” we can even build JSON packages directly, without making people convert them to Scheme modules first. I think that this feature can be useful within the context of the potluck. -- Ricardo GPG: BCA6 89B6 3655 3801 C3C6 2150 197A 5888 235F ACAC https://elephly.net