Relocating some procedures into (guix utils)

Relocating some procedures into (guix utils)

[Bruno Victal]

IMO there are some procedures (or even modules) that could be relocated into (guix utils) as their utility is more general than what their module names would suggest.

Good candidates to relocate into (guix utils):
* (gnu home services utils)
* list-of, interpose, alist?, list-of-string? from (gnu services configuration)

The procedures above are general enough and it's not hard to imagine that some of these could be useful in package definitions.


Cheers,
Bruno

Re: Relocating some procedures into (guix utils)

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Bruno Victal <mirai@makinata.eu> skribis:

> IMO there are some procedures (or even modules) that could be relocated into (guix utils) as their utility is more general than what their module names would suggest.
>
> Good candidates to relocate into (guix utils):
> * (gnu home services utils)

Hmm, not sure.

> * list-of, interpose, alist?, list-of-string? from (gnu services configuration)

I think it’s fine to keep them over there.  :-)

The rationale is that one Shouldn’t™ be using things like ‘alist?’ and
‘list-of-string?’ in “real code”: they have linear complexity (like
‘list?’), they might be ill-defined, and we don’t generally write
polymorphic code anyway.

They *are* useful though as a limited form of contracts for
‘define-configuration’ fields, so it’s good to keep them there.

Taking a step back, my inclination is to keep things local, or even
private, until/unless there’s clear evidence of (1) usefulness beyond
their initial place of birth, and (2) the interface is “clean” enough
for them to be promoted.  #2 is subjective, so it’s really on a
case-by-case basis.

My 2¢!

Ludo’.