Re: Which inputs to define for 'meta' utilities?

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hi,

Hartmut Goebel <h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com> skribis:

> I'm about to package dtrx <https://brettcsmith.org/2007/dtrx/>, a script
> to intelligently extract multiple archive types. The script determines
> the archive format and calls the respective extraction tool, which it
> searches on the $PATH.
>
> 1) Should I add all required tools as inputs?
>
> 2) Should I use propagated inputs then? The executable are searched on
> $PATH.

Option #2 is a bad idea (propagated inputs should be used only as a last
resort.)

Adding the tools as inputs is only useful if there are tests that
actually run dtrx; otherwise it’s useless.

Then you have two options:

  1. Let dtrx search for tools in $PATH.  The downside is that it won’t
     work out-of-the-box, as in “guix environment -C --ad-hoc dtrx”.

  2. Hard-code the absolute file names for the tools in question in
     dtrx.  That way ‘guix pack dtrx’ will be self-contained, etc.

I’d prefer #2.

Ludo’.