Auxiliary files

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hi Alex,

Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès (2016-12-29 18:40 +0100) wrote:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> skribis:

[...]

>>> What about making "gnu/packages/files" (or another dirname) directory,
>>> and putting "guix-emacs.el" and kernel configs ("linux-libre-*.conf")
>>> there?
>>>
>>> I mean "gnu/packages/patches" is not always enough, sometimes we want to
>>> use real files in the package recipes (configs for 'linux-libre' or
>>> "guix-emacs.el" for 'emacs'), so having "gnu/packages/files" seems
>>> reasonable to me, WDYT?
>>
>> Sounds good.
>>
>> In general, we can create other subdirectories alongside patches/ and
>> bootstrap/.  So we could have linux-conf/ and emacs/ there.
>
> But we keep all patches in a single directory, why should there be
> multiple dirs for auxiliary files?

I imagine linux-conf/ would contain several files (all the configuration
files), and so on.  IOW, we can create directories anytime there’s a
category of files that go together well.  𝅘𝅥𝅮

>> We can also
>> add regular files like guix-emacs.el directly under gnu/packages (like
>> ld-wrapper.in, linux-conf.*, etc.)
>>
>> All this is fine as long as the files get installed in the right place
>> wrt. %load-path.
>>
>> I’m not sure a catch-all files/ (or aux-files/?) directory is helpful
>> though.  There’s a case for having a linux-conf/ subdirectory now; for
>> guix-emacs.el, I am slightly inclined to put it directly in
>> gnu/packages, but no strong opinion.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
> I don't like keeping such files in "gnu/packages" the most!  My opinion
> is that only .scm files should be placed there.
>
> I vote either for a single "aux-files" (I like this name) directory, or
> for its sub-directories ("aux-files/emacs", "aux-files/linux").

OK, sounds good.  We’ll also need a ‘search-auxiliary-file’ procedure
(or similar) just like we have ‘search-patch’, to facilitate things.

Thanks!

Ludo’.