[PATCH] gnu: alacritty: Update to 0.7.1.

[PATCH] gnu: alacritty: Update to 0.7.1.

[John Soo]

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Hey Tobias and Nicolás,  

  
I added alacritty some time ago but I do use it every day.    I don’t use Wayland (yet) though so I can’t say whether the hack in question is working. I can confirm that the update is just fine on X though.
  

  

  
Sorry for not keeping it more up to date!    I think the alacritty project itself has been slow to make releases, to be fair, though.    Thanks for taking a look at it!
  

  
- John
  
  
  
  

  
     

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Re: [PATCH] gnu: alacritty: Update to 0.7.1.

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

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Hi Nicolas,

Commit 3e10f0eef0fb8b99f5220653b6564693365491b1 removes a phase:

> Remove unneeded phase and some replacements.

without explanation.  It's admittedly not the prettiest hack, but 
is needed to run Alacritty on Wayland[0].

Do you remember why you removed it?  (Please, say so in the commit 
message!)

Kind regards,

T G-R

[0]: http://logs.guix.gnu.org/guix/2021-02-16.log#150007

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Re: [PATCH] gnu: alacritty: Update to 0.7.1.

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

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Restored in 4390934f0b4a0d9208423e3b261e0f09b40eeb39 and it seems 
to work.

Kind regards,

T G-R

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Re: [PATCH] gnu: alacritty: Update to 0.7.1.

[Nicolas Goaziou]

Hello,

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me@tobias.gr> writes:

> Commit 3e10f0eef0fb8b99f5220653b6564693365491b1 removes a phase:
>
>> Remove unneeded phase and some replacements.
>
> without explanation.  It's admittedly not the prettiest hack, but is
> needed to run Alacritty on Wayland[0].
>
> Do you remember why you removed it?  (Please, say so in the commit
> message!)

As written in the commit message, I removed it because Alacritty was
working without it here on my Gnome 3 Wayland session, hence the
"unneeded" part. What else was necessary?

Please bear in mind that:
1. it was not a small version bump, so many things could have changed in
   the package definition;

2. the hack is actually non-trivial as it references packages that do
   not even belong to the inputs but was not even a single comment line
   explaining its importance.

I'm sorry if you lost time re-instating this hack. OTOH, there is
certainly room for improvement in this situation.

Regards,
-- 
Nicolas Goaziou

Re: [PATCH] gnu: alacritty: Update to 0.7.1.

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

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Hi!

Nicolas Goaziou 写道：
> As written in the commit message, I removed it because Alacritty 
> was
> working without it

Thank you.  That's more than I could infer from a terse ‘Remove 
unneeded phase’: you ran it on Wayland [see below] and it worked.

It's OK add rationales like this above the dry changelog (I 
mention it only because people have assumed the contrary).

> here on my Gnome 3 Wayland session, hence the "unneeded" part.

Are you sure Gnome 3 doesn't run X?

I'd be suprised (and interested) if

  DISPLAY= $(guix time-machine --commit=3e10f0e -- \
	build alacritty)/bin/alacritty

works for you.  It should complain and fail to launch at all, 
because it can't connect to the legacy X(wayland) server.

> What else was necessary?

I don't know.  Maybe more testing, or pinging the original author. 
No definitive answers here.

> Please bear in mind that:
> 1. it was not a small version bump, so many things could have 
> changed in
>    the package definition;

Right, I had to bump the version numbers, but it wasn't an 
unreasonable amount of work.

> 2. the hack is actually non-trivial as it references packages 
> that do
>    not even belong to the inputs but was not even a single 
>    comment line
>    explaining its importance.

Agreed on both counts: it's a gross hack[0], and it deserves a 
comment.  I should have added one and will do so now.

Kind regards,

T G-R

[0]: The alternative is stuffing both X libraries into 
LD_LIBRARY_PATH, which is grosser...

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Re: [PATCH] gnu: alacritty: Update to 0.7.1.

[Nicolas Goaziou]

Hello,

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me@tobias.gr> writes:

> Are you sure Gnome 3 doesn't run X?

I don't know. I use Gnome 3 on Debian 10 and reports "Wayland" as
"Windowing system" (translation is mine).

OTOH, I know that some Wayland-specific applications, e.g., "wob",
refuse to run in it. So it might as well be an hybrid beast.

> I'd be suprised (and interested) if
>
>  DISPLAY= $(guix time-machine --commit=3e10f0e -- \
> 	build alacritty)/bin/alacritty
>
> works for you.  It should complain and fail to launch at all, because
> it can't connect to the legacy X(wayland) server.

The command above fails for me, indeed.

> I don't know.  Maybe more testing, or pinging the original author. No
> definitive answers here.

It's difficult to do more testing without knowing what to test. It is
a terminal emulator. I launched it and executed a couple of commands in
it.

Moreover, the original author hasn't updated the package since it was
added, a year ago. So I guess they were not interested in keeping it up
to date.

I'm not pretending the process could not be improved on my side. However
in this particular case, the improvements are not obvious. Also, on
complicated packages such as this one, I think some hiccups are going to
happen anyway. Yet, it is obviously better than not updating them at
all.

>> Please bear in mind that:
>> 1. it was not a small version bump, so many things could have
>> changed in
>>    the package definition;
>
> Right, I had to bump the version numbers, but it wasn't an
> unreasonable amount of work.

For large version bumps, I tend to discard old tweaks first and check if
the program runs without them. Otherwise, we might pile up cruft in
package definitions forever.

> Agreed on both counts: it's a gross hack[0], and it deserves
> a comment.  I should have added one and will do so now.

Thank you. 

It might also be interesting to add the command "DISPLAY= $(guix build
alacrity)/bin/alacritty" in the comment so anyone can try it out before
updating the package.

WDYT?

Regards,
-- 
Nicolas Goaziou