Re: [PATCH] ui: 'package->recutils' serializes the source field.

[Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com>]

Ricardo Wurmus (2016-08-11 19:42 +0300) wrote:

> Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> David Craven (2016-08-10 17:13 +0300) wrote:
>>
>>>> Even so, if one insisted on using the recutils output in a programmatic
>>>> fashion (e.g. in a bash script), it would be best to run “guix build
>>>> --source” on the package names to obtain the actual source tarballs that
>>>> are used by Guix.
>>>
>>> I don't disagree. Alex what do you think?
>>
>> Do you mean about your original proposal?  I am for it: I don't
>> comprehend why the source URL can't be displayed (especially since a
>> user can easily find it anyway), but I don't understand FSDG well enough
>> to judge, so I prefer not to participate in this discussion.
>
> I have previously stated that I’m not convinced that we really need a
> serialisation of the “source” field in the user-facing recutils output.
> The patch was a welcome demonstration of how this feature would look
> like.

Yes, I agree that it's a good demonstration of using Scheme API to get
any package info you need.  But many (probably most) people do not know
Guile and this Guix package API well enough, and for them it may be much
easier to operate on the recutils output of "guix package --show" in
their scripts.  If I understand correctly, that's why David suggested
that patch.

P.S.  I don't want to raise another wave of messages in this thread :-)
If I understand it right, everyone agreed on not merging the patch.

-- 
Alex