Re: 2 ideas (Was: Re: bug#31518: [PATCH 10/21] gnu: Add emacs-google-translate.)

[Nils Gillmann <ng0@n0.is>]

swedebugia transcribed 1.6K bytes:
> Hi Ricardo 
> 
> On June 10, 2018 1:35:00 PM GMT+02:00, Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> wrote:
> >
> >Hi Nils,
> >
> >> I think we discussed something similar briefly. Or at least package
> >> attached metadata which ends up in a '/guix' folder of the output.
> >> I've been following (not yet implementing) a similar idea, where
> >> such messages are either local mail and/or end up in a (mapped to
> >guix:)
> >> '/guix/doc/' folder, where files are named like
> >$applicationname-$version.number.NAME.note
> >> where '.note' is just a basic txt file.
> >> These notes could contain messages specific to the OS, the
> >architecture, general
> >> advice, etc.
> >>
> >> Not really well thought through yet, but that's a start.
> >>
> >> Think of it not as description or synopsis part, but rather let's say
> >> (in theory):
> >> (note "STRING") or (note (list "NOTE 1"
> >>                                "NOTE 2")).
> >
> >This is not a bad idea, in my opinion.  It could be useful to have
> >application-specific setup notes in a well-known location that is
> >gathered when the profile is built.
> >
> >I would not like these notes to be printed automatically upon
> >installation, but generating a file with important notes seems like a
> >good idea in general.
> 
> Would you agree to print a hint about these notes having been installed 

Not really, because in most cases you will not be able to catch all
notifications. My approach is to notify the user and/or root user with
a local email (after first install, first system generation install),
which then can include a note about the existence of these notes. This
draws a bit of inspiration from Gentoo and OpenBSD mail-on-first-use.

Unless you can think of an example for a non-interactive environments.
I think there's at least one, but what you describe is already an
extension to the basic idea, especially the tool below.
One could use that, but it's questionable since guix already has quiet
a large number of commands. It would be a good initial extension to the
idea, but no permanent solution.

Is it bad that guix has a large number of commands? I'm not sure. I'm
biased with spending too much time on minimal envivonments and ask
friends and random strangers opinions about these kinds of things to
form a less biased opinion.

> and how to access them easily?
> 
> Would this be a useful utility:
> 
> $giux notes
> -> shows all notes relating to previously installed packages. 
> 
> And
> 
> $guix notes <package>
> -> show notes related to a specific package whether it is installed or not. 
> -- 
> Cheers Swedebugia