Re: 'guix-build' returns 'unknown package', Bison's testsuite fails

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hi,

Nikita Karetnikov <nikita@karetnikov.org> skribis:

>   1. 'guix-build' doesn't work for new packages; it returns
>      "<package>: unknown package."  I'm using the '-e' option as a
>      workaround, but it's not very convenient.

‘guix-build’ searches all modules under gnu/packages; in those modules,
it searches all the public variables that match ‘package?’, and finally
compares against their ‘name’ field.

Could it be that your package is not in a public variable?

>      For instance, if I copy the recipe for 'sed' to 'newsed.scm', then
>      replace 'sed' with 'newsed' in that file, and try to build it via
>      'guix-build newsed', it will return the mentioned error message.

That’s expected: what matters it the ‘name’ field of the ‘<package>’
instance, not the name of the file that defines it.

>   2. Bison's testsuite fails and I'm not able to fix it.  So I'd like to
>      disable it because I want to test 'gobject-introspection'.  Why
>      doesn't '(arguments `(#:tests? #f))' disable the testsuite?

Can you provide more details?  It appears to build for me as
/nix/store/2kdr905aj5kkm0mrwjqxsgv6zvmh2y0j-bison-2.6.1 (x86_64-linux).

> These issues may seem unrelated, but there is a similarity: My changes
> have no effect.  I've just replaced 'gnu/packages/bison.scm' with an
> empty file, but 'guix-build bison' doesn't raise any errors.  Is it
> related?

Actually, there’s an evil bug.  ‘guix-build’ & co. do this:

  GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH="@guilemoduledir@:$GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH"
  export GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH

So if you’ve run ‘make install’ before, the installed modules will
prevail over the non-installed ones.

I’ll see how to fix it.  In the meantime, you can, ahem, run
‘make uninstall’ or ‘make install’...

Thanks,
Ludo’.