Re: [PATCH] profiles: Generate GHC's package database cache.

[Federico Beffa <beffa@ieee.org>]

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Eventually we could think of more sophisticated way to determine whether
> to trigger a given “hook” (info-dir, ca-certificates, ghc.)  Perhaps
> this ‘ghc-package-cache-file’ procedure could be added as an
> ‘environment-hook’ field of the ghc package and it would be triggered
> iff GHC is installed.  (This approach would work well for GHC, but not
> for info-dir or ca-certificates, though.)

On top of the mentioned cases above, there are many programs making use
of caches. Some are:

* GLib's IO modules normally use a cache file 'giomodule.cache'. We set
  the env. var. GIO_EXTRA_MODULES, but it's use is explicitly
  discouraged by the project.

* XDG icons 'icon-theme.cache': I see some clashes in my profile (e.g.,
  gtk and Inkscape).

* TeX 'ls-R' files: it would probably simplify modularization.

* I see python's easy_install site.py clashes in my profile.  These are
  probably harmless, but annoying.

It would definitely be good to establish a solid and general way to run
"hooks" to address this kind of situations.

Regards,
Fede