texlive-fetch instead of svn-fetch

texlive-fetch instead of svn-fetch

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hey Guix,

Tex Live packages often have a complicated source file layout.  They
don’t usually come in a nice self-contained tarball.  Instead they are a
mosaic of files that are sourced from different parts of the Tex Live
SVN tree.  For many Tex Live packages the “source” field is
insufficient, so we add lots of additional origins as native inputs.
This makes for very ugly package definitions.  (See
texlive-fonts-txfonts for an example.)

What do you think about adding a new procedure that can fetch sources
from different locations?  This might be done by extending SVN-FETCH or
by adding a special TEXLIVE-FETCH that fetches sources from different
directories in the source tree, returning them as *one* origin with one
simple hash.

--
Ricardo

Re: texlive-fetch instead of svn-fetch

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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Hi,

Would that still be needed if we implement a tlpdb-based importer?

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

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Re: texlive-fetch instead of svn-fetch

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> writes:

> Would that still be needed if we implement a tlpdb-based importer?

The importer only helps you generate the initial package definition.

A tlpdb-based importer cannot do magic.  The tlpdb file tells it what
files are expected to be provided by the package and what files are
considered sources, but this doesn’t change the fact that these files
come from different parts of the TeX Live SVN tree and somehow have to
be added as inputs.  The importer can automate this by adding the
various native inputs, but you still end up with an ugly package
definition.  Think of all of the native inputs you’ll have to update
when updating an existing package definition…

Changing the way the input sources are represented is independent from
the way this representation is generated.

--
Ricardo

Re: texlive-fetch instead of svn-fetch

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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Thanks for clarifying this.
Then I 100% agree with your approach.

I should have a little bit more free time in the coming days, so I'll (finally)
get down to write the tlpdb importer :)

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

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Re: texlive-fetch instead of svn-fetch

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hey Ricardo!

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> skribis:

> Tex Live packages often have a complicated source file layout.  They
> don’t usually come in a nice self-contained tarball.  Instead they are a
> mosaic of files that are sourced from different parts of the Tex Live
> SVN tree.  For many Tex Live packages the “source” field is
> insufficient, so we add lots of additional origins as native inputs.
> This makes for very ugly package definitions.  (See
> texlive-fonts-txfonts for an example.)
>
> What do you think about adding a new procedure that can fetch sources
> from different locations?  This might be done by extending SVN-FETCH or
> by adding a special TEXLIVE-FETCH that fetches sources from different
> directories in the source tree, returning them as *one* origin with one
> simple hash.

I don’t know much about the source file layout in TeX Live, but from
what you describe, a ‘texlive-fetch’ procedure that gathers files sounds
like the right approach.

Thanks,
Ludo’.