Re: How to deal with system-wide state databases

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Roel Janssen <roel@gnu.org> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès writes:
>
>> Hello!
>>
>> Roel Janssen <roel@gnu.org> skribis:
>>
>>> How should we deal with mechanisms like this?  Should I change the scrollkeeper
>>> database directory per program, so in this case it becomes:
>>> /gnu/store/xgbvyqs...-gparted-0.26.0/var/lib/scrollkeeper
>>>
>>> Or can we deal with this in a more cross-package way?
>>
>> Maybe we could add a profile hook to ‘%default-profile-hooks’ in (guix
>> profiles)?
>
> I think people only need Scrollkeeper when they wish to have the
> documentation available in Yelp (GNOME's help browser).  So it only
> affects a few people I believe.

I think documentation is quite useful, in general.  :-)

> Would it then still make sense?  Maybe this hook should only be active
> when Yelp is installed in the profile on which the transaction
> operates.  Is that possible?

Definitely.  For instance, ‘ghc-package-cache-file’ does exactly this
kind of trick.  (It’s not completely satisfying, since we’re simply
matching file names, but it does the job.)

> With this construct, I'd have to patch out the 'scrollkeeper-update'
> command from the GParted build system.

Yes.

Thanks,
Ludo’.