From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ricardo Wurmus Subject: Re: How to get the package metadata as structured data? Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 14:52:29 +0200 Message-ID: <87wpjodbw2.fsf@elephly.net> References: <87a8gss0mc.fsf@gnu.org> <56f534d8cd574be59d39ad3a3ca5a1b6@exchsrv2.sgc.loc> <87y444deyq.fsf@elephly.net> 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]:36217) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bXT00-0004f0-J3 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 10 Aug 2016 08:52:45 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bXSzt-0005l3-UG for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 10 Aug 2016 08:52:43 -0400 Received: from sender163-mail.zoho.com ([74.201.84.163]:24566) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bXSzt-0005kz-KI for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 10 Aug 2016 08:52:37 -0400 In-reply-to: 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: Catonano Cc: guix-devel Catonano writes: > 2016-08-10 13:46 GMT+02:00 Ricardo Wurmus : > >> >> Philippe Ombredanne writes: >> >> > David Craven wrote: >> >> I aborted, since I realised that guix package -s doesn't include the >> >> source url and hash, which would be important for a testsuite... >> > >> > IMHO, if the rec data is the only way to get to the packages data, the >> > source url would be rather essential to get in. >> >> The recutils output is not the *only* way to access the package data. >> All packages in Guix are just Scheme variables. Package data are >> available as S-expressions and can be read by Scheme programs or parsed >> by external applications. The recutils output is just an additional >> format used when interacting with Guix on the command line. >> >> (Personally, I’m not enthusiastic about adding a serialised form of the >> source field to the recutils output.) >> >> ~~ Ricardo >> >> >> > Not so long ago, someone posted a script that produced a web page with the > results of linting all the packages > > That's an example > > One could produce an xml file to be imported in Gephi, just to make another > example. > > Or a SQL text file to be imported in some relational db, or a different > format to be imported in some not relational db... I understand that it may be useful. I just think that the representation as a Guile Scheme expression/value is *already* much more useful. That’s what made “guix web” possible, a web interface like this one: http://guix.mdc-berlin.de Producing other formats (such as XML files) is also quite simple. The package expression itself is *executable*. By overriding the meaning of the executable parts one could easily evaluate the expression such that it generates some other format. ~~ Ricardo