Again, thanks for the consistent quick turn-around, lately.

> > How about we just go ahead and treat MINOR as mandatory as well?
> In other words minor should always have a value >= "a" and 902 was just
> missing it?  Fair enough, in that case making version mandatory sounds
> like the way to go.

Exactly.

Thanks to your close reading of the patch and your opinionated suggestions, we
were able to catch this

> > The file-union seems like a cludgy workaround to me. What we really
> > want is an easy, direct way to get handles on the input files. Heck,
> > program-file objects already have a name property; why can't we use
> > that? Attached patches are a proof-of-concept.
> That proof of concept does look nice, but for one we're trying to move
> away from labels, and for the other, it's on a scale that I don't want
> to decide as part of a package addition.  If you feel it has value
> outside of the proposed usage for j, discussing it under a different
> number or perhaps on guix-devel might be worth it.

Of course. It would be kind of ridiculous to merge some random, only vaguely
related patch deep in the internals of the system, as part of a simple package
addendum.

We're not writing bills for the Senate here!

Whether or not the patch is valuable, I could learn a lot from any ensuing
discussion, so I might take up your idea to post separately.

> > That said, if this is going to turn into a big rabbit hole, can we just
> > munge the J package inputs into whatever you think is best?
> As said in my previous mail, that'd be
> > >   (define jsoftware-aux-files
> > >     (file-union "jsoftware-aux-files"
> > >       `(("profile.ijs" ,(search-aux-file ...)
> > >         ("ijconsole" ,(program-file ...))))
> In my personal opinion, you can then simply add jsoftware-aux-files as
> input and (search-input-file "ijconsole") instead of the current assoc-
> ref.  WDYT?

Sounds clear to me!

However, for some reason, right now if 'search-auxiliary-file' is inside a
file-union, I'm getting ENOENT on the file somewhere:

    Backtrace:
               2 (primitive-load "/gnu/store/fk7mr923n47r7wj7xqlfmh80jc5?")
    In ice-9/eval.scm:
        619:8  1 (_ #f)
    In unknown file:
               0 (stat "/home/x/devel/org.gnu.savannah/guix/gnu/package?" ?)

    ERROR: In procedure stat:
    In procedure stat: No such file or directory: "/home/x/devel/org.gnu.savannah/guix/gnu/packages/aux-files/jsoftware/profilex.ijs"
    builder for `/gnu/store/4zhrg7g17bqpmlgp5i58vbsc5g8xsl1s-jsoftware-aux-files.drv' failed with exit code 1
    build of /gnu/store/4zhrg7g17bqpmlgp5i58vbsc5g8xsl1s-jsoftware-aux-files.drv failed
    View build log at '/var/log/guix/drvs/4z/hrg7g17bqpmlgp5i58vbsc5g8xsl1s-jsoftware-aux-files.drv.bz2'.
    cannot build derivation `/gnu/store/ax3nwc5xybqcirxadm4ynz99jsq3l3j7-jsoftware-j-903.a.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
    guix build: error: build of `/gnu/store/ax3nwc5xybqcirxadm4ynz99jsq3l3j7-jsoftware-j-903.a.drv' failed

Running `stat <path>` from the command line on the offending path succeeds as
expected, and moving the 'search-auxiliary-file' out of the file-union and
into the package inputs lets the build proceed.

I'm stumped. Attached is the package definition, for reference.


> Don't worry, I don't plan to drag this out too long, but I also don't
> planning on pushing this today.  There are definitely some stylistic
> choices that I want to make under the considerations here (basically,
> we can just merge major and minor into a single base that'd be "903.a",
> for example), but it's almost bedtime and I want to relax a little
> before going to sleep.

Sure. I'm mostly just way out of my depth here, getting sent on deep
rabbit-holes every time you respond give me some feedback to chew on. :P

Definitely down for some stylistic improvements. Let me know!

Hope you got some nice relaxation time in!