On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 09:44:02PM +0200, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> 
> I don’t know about hiding the packages and moving them to the same
> module.  In the past we’ve kept package variants always with the
> original package it was derived from,
> e.g. “armadillo-for-rcpparmadillo”, which is only used for
> “r-rcpparmadillo” in the “statistics” module, but which inherits from
> “armadillo” in the “maths” module.
> 
> Back then I also thought that moving them together would be better, but
> if I remember correctly I was asked to keep the variant with the
> parent package.
> 
> I’ll disable the extempore packages for non-x86_64, but I’d like to see
> some more opinions about whether to move the variants.
> 
> ~~ Ricardo
> 

Isn't this how we had the problem with nss and nss-certs, between
certs.scm and gnuzilla.scm? certs.scm imported gnuzilla.scm so nss-certs
could inherit from nss, so that meant we couldn't import certs into
gnuzilla without causing a stack overflow and a rift in the time-space
continuum.

If its just an older version I think it should stay in the original
module. If its an unbundled fork then we should think twice before
inheriting.

We do always have the (very verbose) option of
("armadillo" ,(@@ (gnu packages maths) armadillo-for-rcpparmadillo)) for
packages that have their own special tweaks that we want to keep
private, in a different module.

-- 
Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   אפרים פלשנר
GPG key = A28B F40C 3E55 1372 662D  14F7 41AA E7DC CA3D 8351
Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted