Re: [PATCH 2/4] emacs: Add 'guix-devel-download-package-source'.

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> skribis:

> Alex Kost writes:
>
>> Ludovic Courtès (2015-10-08 01:10 +0300) wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>>>>> for example "" (an empty string).  Also I believe people begin to
>>>>>> write a new package from some template, so you have a working skeleton
>>>>>> of future package with all required fields from the very beginning.
>>>>>> Then after filling an origin 'uri', you could "C-c . s" to download
>>>>>> the source and get its hash.
>>>>>
>>>>> Hmm.  I’m skeptical.  :-)
>>>>
>>>> Sorry, I didn't get it.  Skeptical that people start from a template?
>>>
>>> Yes, it feels weird to me, the idea that an <origin> object with bogus
>>> values would be created just for the sake of satisfying the download
>>> tool.
>>
>> Hm, I have an opposite opinion: for me it is weird to write a package
>> from scratch.  I usually start from a package template that has all
>> required fields (including <origin>) or even I just copy an existing
>> package and then modify the fields I need.
>>
>> I wonder, do you start to write a package from scratch?
>
> I think helpers to get people started are useful.  I cannot remember
> fields from memory, not just in Guix, but in pretty much all code.  Thus
> I ususally look at other code examples to remember how things work.
> Sometimes I set up yasnippet expansion templates in emacs.

Yes I think it’s good to have something that generates a template.

I’ve always had on my to-do list some sort of a catch-all importer:
you’d give it a tarball URL, and it’d produce a template with the right
build system, maybe some dependencies inferred from configure.ac or
CMakeLists.txt or setup.py, etc.

Ludo’.