Hi Andreas & Ludo,

On Fri, 3 May 2019, Ludovic Courtès wrote:

> Hello David,
>
> david.larsson@selfhosted.xyz skribis:
>
>> This is my first contribution to guix and it's just a minor fix for
>> the guile-bash package which had an outdated source url. I was able to
>> retrieve the same revision of the package via the software-heritage
>> project's website and upload it to gitlab. Then I installed it
>> successfully via guix package -f my-guile-bash.scm using the gitlab
>> url, then copied it to the existing guile-xyz.scm in gnu/packages.
>
> [...]
>
>> --- a/gnu/packages/guile-xyz.scm
>> +++ b/gnu/packages/guile-xyz.scm
>> @@ -294,23 +294,21 @@ dictionary and suggesting spelling corrections.")
>>      (license license:gpl3+)))
>>
>>  (define-public guile-bash
>> -  ;; This project is currently retired.  It was initially announced here:
>> -  ;; <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2015-02/msg00003.html>.
>> -  (let ((commit "1eabc563ca5692b3e08d84f1f0e6fd2283284469")
>> +    (let ((commit "49099fe6a592aa3b8001e826b939869fe5811785")
>>          (revision "0"))
>
> Why is the commit different?  Looks like it’s more than just a mirror.
>
> If you made changes on top of the original code, that’s actually great.
> However, I’d prefer to first see a patch that simply changes the URL,
> not the commit and hash, and later updates to a different revision.
>
> Does that make sense?
>

I made a commit since I was unable figure out how to create a
git-mirror from the Software Heritage website but was able to retrieve
the correct commit as a tarball. Then I guix init'ed the folder, and
made a commit in order to push it to gitlab.

> Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> skribis:
>
>> should the package not be retrieved automatically from Software Heritage
>> with the newest Guix API? And apart from that, will it be desirable to keep
>> around an unmaintained software for which the source has disappeared?

I don't know if the newest Guix API would fix it, but I haven't been
able to install guile-bash from source so far using e.g. guix
challenge. I can't really answer your second question, but I will
personally use the package and thought it would be nice to be able to
retrieve it from a standard Guix install and that it can be built and
challenged. Previously I had to add additional --substitute-url's to
guix install it.

>
> I think David is in fact suggesting that they may well be maintaining
> it, which is good news IMO.  :-)

I wish that was the case - maybe in the future, I am slowly learning
Guile at the moment :-)

Currently, I can at most support the package definition and change the
url if someone notifies me they want to start actively maintaining it.

So I don't know if you think the patch should be rejected or not.. maybe
the comment about the project being retired should remain, if so I can
resubmit a patch.

Thanks for your comments,
// David L