Packages with the same description

Packages with the same description

[mikadoZero]

Issue:
Packages with the same synopsis and description.

Why does it matter:
This is an issue for people who want to know the difference between the packages.  Particularly if they do not understand dependencies or are not going to look at the source code for the packages.

Examples:
guile-emacs and emacs
guile-for-guile-emacs and guile

There could be more packages with the same issue.

Cause:
guile-emacs inherits from emacs and guile-for-guile-emacs inherits from guile.  In both cases they do not have their own synopsis or description.  This results in them inheriting the synopsis and description.

Mitigation:
A potential mitigation is to check that if a package inherits it also has it's own synopsis and description.  This check could happen in the linting or continuous integration.

Re: Packages with the same description

[mikadoZero]

Looking into this further there are many packages with non unique synopsis or description. 

Total number of Guix packages.

guix package -s "" | recsel -p name | sed '/^[[:space:]]*$/d' | tr --delete '\n' | sed 's/name: /\nname: /g' | wc -l                       

9211

Number of packages with non unique synopsis.

guix package -s "" | recsel -p synopsis | sed '/^[[:space:]]*$/d' | tr --delete '\n' | sed 's/synopsis: /\nsynopsis: /g' | sort | uniq --all-repeated | wc -l

2548

Number of packages with non unique description.

guix package -s "" | recsel -p description | sed '/^[[:space:]]*$/d' | tr --delete '\n' | sed 's/description: /\ndescription: /g' | sort | uniq --all-repeated | wc -l

2459

Package descriptions sorted by how many times they are duplicated. 

guix package -s "" | recsel -p description | sed '/^[[:space:]]*$/d' | tr --delete '\n' | sed 's/description: /\ndescription: /g' | sort | uniq --all-repeated | uniq --count | sort --general-numeric-sort --reverse | less

The synopsis of packages sorted by how many times they are duplicated.

guix package -s "" | recsel -p synopsis | sed '/^[[:space:]]*$/d' | tr --delete '\n' | sed 's/synopsis: /\nsynopsis: /g' | sort | uniq --all-repeated | uniq --count | sort --general-numeric-sort --reverse | less