Re: Problems with downloading from https

[Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>]

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> skribis:
>
>> Ludovic Courtès (2014-10-26 16:46 +0300) wrote:
>>
>>> Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> skribis:
>>>
>>>> Yes, I installed gnutls, but it didn't work because I didn't set the
>>>> right guile paths: “guix package --search-paths” recommends
>>>> "/usr/local/var/guix/profiles/per-user/<user>/guix-profile/share/guile/site/2.0"
>>>> but "gnutls.scm" is actually placed in
>>>> "/usr/local/var/guix/profiles/per-user/<user>/guix-profile/share/guile/site"
>>>> so ‘(use-modules (gnutls))’ failed for me.
>>>
>>> Oh, that’s a bug of the GnuTLS package: we should pass the right
>>> configure flag so that modules go to site/2.0.  Could you do that?

Alex committed this change, and it broke all https downloads in Guix,
leading to hydra build failures.  For example, see:

  http://hydra.gnu.org/build/132928/nixlog/1/raw

The reason is that guix/download.scm contains this code:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
              ;; Add GnuTLS to the inputs and to the load path.
              #~(eval-when (load expand eval)
                  (set! %load-path
                        (cons (string-append #$(gnutls-package)
                                             "/share/guile/site")
                              %load-path)))
              #~#t)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

For now, I think we should revert this commit and discuss it further
before proceeding.

>> Yes, but I'm a little concerned.  Should it really be so?  What about
>> guile-1.8; isn't it supposed to use gnutls module as well?
>
> 1.8 has long been deprecated, so let’s not worry about it.

I think Alex was right to be concerned.  We'll have the same problem
when Guile 2.2 comes around, and then again for 2.4.  I'm reluctant to
hardcode "2.0" into the code above.  Think about what it implies for
GnuTLS in the future.  Will they be expected to install their modules
into site/2.0, site/2.2, site/2.4, etc?  Do we really want to advocate
this practice to projects that install Guile modules?

       Mark