Re: Can we find a better idiom for unversioned packages?

["Jonathan McHugh" <indieterminacy@libre.brussels>]

Hi Ludo,

Just checking:

Is Diffstatic a real tool? It wasnt quite clear to me (and I fancy finding a new diff tool).

====================
Jonathan McHugh
indieterminacy@libre.brussels

September 8, 2021 11:31 PM, "Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:

> Hello!
> 
> Sarah Morgensen <iskarian@mgsn.dev> skribis:
> 
>> Currently, there are about 1500 packages defined like this:
>> 
>> (define-public sbcl-feeder
>> (let ((commit "b05f517d7729564575cc809e086c262646a94d34")
>> (revision "1"))
>> (package
>> [...])))
>> 
>> I feel like there are some issues with this idiom (in no particular
>> order):
> 
> I’m late to the party but I’ll complement previous answers. :-)
> 
>> 1. When converting between this idiom and regularly versioned packages,
>> the git diff shows the whole package changing because of the indentation
>> change.
> 
> One can use ‘git diff -w’ to work around that (or the newfangled
> Diffstatic tool.)
> 
>> 3. Packages inheriting from it lose the definitions. For actual fields,
>> we have e.g. `(package-version this-package)`, but we have no equivalent
>> for these.
> 
> Right, these pieces of information are not “first-class”, except in the
> ‘git-reference’ record (or similar) for the commit ID. Do you have
> examples in mind where it’s insufficient?
> 
> [...]
> 
>> 5. The closest thing we have to a standardized way of generating
>> versions for these packages is `(version (git-version "0.0.0" revision
>> commit))`. We can do better than that boilerplate.
> 
> I can sympathize with the feeling, but I’m not sure what to do. A
> ‘vcs-version’ record as Maxime proposes seems a bit overkill to me (and
> it would probably have an impact on performance, build times, and
> whatnot.)
> 
>> 6. Not a direct complaint, but I feel like the overall package interface
>> was designed before straight-from-vcs unversioned packages were so
>> common, and so this idiom developed organically to work around that.
> 
> Sure, though “straight-from-vcs” and “unversioned” are two different
> things: I’m fine with the former, but the latter equates to upstream
> telling its users “go find a revision that works for you”. I think
> releases still make sense for any non-trivial piece of software.
> 
> As noted in the manual (info "(guix) Version Numbers"), packages built
> from arbitrary commits were supposed to be exceptional. Perhaps the
> reason we’re having this conversation now is that development practices
> are evolving towards what looks like chaos. :-)
> 
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.