Re: imagemagick@6.9.11-48 to graft or not to graft with 6.9.12-2

[Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr>]

Hello Mark and Léo,

Am Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 05:12:35PM -0400 schrieb Mark H Weaver:
> However, I think it would be going too far to adopt your proposal as a
> general rule for all grafts.  In some cases, it can clearly be seen that
> an upstream release includes little more than bug fixes.  For example,
> if the recent gvfs-1.40.2 security update had required grafting, I would
> not have hesitated to do so, and that would have been much simpler and
> IMO cleaner than importing the upstream patches into our tree.

Am Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 02:34:52PM +0100 schrieb Léo Le Bouter:
> In general my opinion is that backporting fixes is time-consuming and
> that if we have to do it each time I wont be able to keep up with the
> load. I'd rather update things to a version that already includes fixes
> and is supported by upstream even at the cost of world rebuilds. I
> can't deal with upstreams who either do not backport fixes, or don't
> integrate fixes at all.

these are very good arguments, which I understand and share. But moving
to another version is problematic even when there is no soname bump, as
I wrote in my bug report https://issues.guix.gnu.org/47315; grafts with
different version numbers lead to a command line behaviour that is not
understandable:

$ guix package -A imagemagick
imagemagick	6.9.12-2g	out,doc	gnu/packages/imagemagick.scm:132:2
imagemagick	6.9.11-48	out,doc	gnu/packages/imagemagick.scm:48:2

$ guix build imagemagick@6.9.11
guix build: error: imagemagick: package not found for version 6.9.11

$ guix build imagemagick@6.9.11-48
/gnu/store/c30y49vg735g6b4hh590zrc9fmvcsy0w-imagemagick-6.9.12-2g-doc
/gnu/store/l3hr0fimip6v7vmkgxbqygsglxaxasy0-imagemagick-6.9.12-2g

From a user's perspective, inkscape@6.9.11 is at the time there and not
there; it is shown by "guix package", but then not accessible for install-
ation, but silently "glossed over" in favour of a different version.

I just noticed that I can do this:
$ guix build imagemagick@6.9.11-48 --no-grafts
/gnu/store/wlnciwhn6llwqwywf4hq739v5bbcrq3h-imagemagick-6.9.11-48-doc
/gnu/store/vlix7fclb7ifjgmxgpwr1pvraff89w7b-imagemagick-6.9.11-48
But I can also do this:
$ guix build imagemagick@6.9.12-2g --no-grafts
/gnu/store/4s20df0zjmmys8zvlvynksrwz5xqk9ls-imagemagick-6.9.12-2g-doc
/gnu/store/7iwx7rj1ipsbgb9wgimrrflniyxpilw3-imagemagick-6.9.12-2g
where I do not know what I would have expected - the ungrafted version
of 6.9.12 is 6.9.11, no? At the same time, for once it respects my
wish for a specific version.

Otherwise said, grafting to different versions breaks our semantic for
designating packages, in which version numbers play an important role,
and replaces it by a mess which even with the examples above I have a
hard time understanding.
 
Caeterum censeo:
The real fix is probably to do less grafts and more rebuilds...

Andreas