Re: hint: Run `guix search ... | less' to view all the results

[zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com>]

Dear,

On Sun, 26 Apr 2020 at 10:35, Jan Synacek <jsynacek@redhat.com> wrote:

> Seriously? Are you seriously forcing your users to either run emacs (or at least
> to set the env variable) or use pipes to get the entire search result?

It is "known" that Guix should respect the PAGER variable [1,2] and it
is already a feature request [3].

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2020-02/msg00039.html
[2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2020-02/msg00150.html
[3] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2020-02/msg00154.html


> That's just... backwards. Also, it feels like as if the author of that code sort
> of assumed that whoever runs the command is stupid enough not to be able to deal
> with long output. I'm sure that it wasn't meant like that.

The manual recommands to use "guix search" in combination with
'recsels' (see [4] '--search' paragraph).

Therefore, the current philosophy of searching is:

  1) guix search <regexps> | recsel -P name,synopsis | grep <other-regexps>
  2) guix show <your-interest>

I agree we could discuss that... as it was started for example see
this thread [5].

[4] https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/guix.html#Invoking-guix-package
[5] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-12/msg00141.html


> Pretty please, fix this. Don't force your users into usage patterns that might
> be completely foreign to them. Don't truncate output from programs by default.

Thank you for sharing your opinion.

After a discussion [6] on other opinions than yours, another strategy
is implemented [7] and yes the default behaviour could be discussed
(see bottom [8] and elswhere I am too lazy to find them :-)).

[6] https://issues.guix.gnu.org/issue/35551#11
[7] https://issues.guix.gnu.org/issue/36390
[8] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2020-02/msg00378.html


> Here's my suggestion: Don't make idiosyncratic decisions like the one I
> described above. I don't think that your target audience is people completely
> new to linux-like systems. I'm definitely not new. And I'm used to tools that
> just simply (remember the KISS principle?) give me output when I run them.

Your suggestion is to implement "Guix honours $PAGER", right?
And to test on another environment variable name than $INSIDE_EMACS, right?


Thank you for your feedback.

All the best,
simon