Re: [RFC] Package of Nomacs

[Leo Prikler <leo.prikler@student.tugraz.at>]

Hi Rovanion,

Am Donnerstag, den 31.12.2020, 16:37 +0100 schrieb Rovanion Luckey:
> [...]
>  
> > Use git-fetch instead and don't recurse into submodules.  You will
> > likely encounter some errors, because it doesn't seem as though
> > nomacs
> > expects you to have its inputs properly packages.  *sigh*
> 
> Hmm, this one I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind. I think
> I read in some packaging guidelines that url-fetch was preferred if
> possible.
The reason is two-fold: First, it seems to me, that this is a github-
generated tarball, which have been known to be unstable.  Second, the
tarball includes a large number of 3rd party sources already packaged
in Guix.  Most of them are git submodules, so by using a non-recursive
checkout you can strip them without much effort.

url-fetch is to be preferred, when there is a sane tarball to fetch. 
Most projects only hosted on github don't have that, but certain large-
scale projects (such as GNU itself or GNOME) do host tarballs.  It also
enables mirror:// URLS, which translate to a number of hosts, the first
of which to successfully provide a package is chosen.

> > Instead of adding the path to the source directory, try `(cd
> > "ImageLounge")` in a phase after 'unpack.
> > 
> 
> I'm told that cd is an unbound variable when I try that :/
My bad, the Scheme procedure equivalent to cd is "chdir".

Regards,
Leo