Re: new manifest format readers?

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hi,

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> skribis:

> Can we simplify this case by adding manifest readers for different
> formats?  One simple format could be plain text:
>
> # this is for compilers
> gfortran@5
> gcc-toolchain@5
>
> # this is for fun
> cdogs-sdl
>
> The manifest reader would just discard # comments and interpret each
> non-empty line as a spec string.

Sounds reasonable.

I guess we’d need to add a new option to read this format, or should
‘guix package -m’ try to automatically dispatch based on the file name
extension with a new --format option to override the guess?

> While I love Scheme, I don’t think anything is to be gained from
> exposing users who don’t want to use Scheme for manifests to opaque
> blobs of code and syntax they don’t want to understand.

I thought everyone needed their dose of parentheses, but maybe you’re
right.  :-)

Ludo’.