From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ricardo Wurmus Subject: Re: How to reference external program used in shell-scripts? Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2019 16:50:11 +0200 Message-ID: <87pnlfww2k.fsf@elephly.net> References: <72f51f57-3d1a-15f3-458b-cf036841c15a@crazy-compilers.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:59435) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.86_2) (envelope-from ) id 1hvjkG-0005lJ-0U for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 08 Aug 2019 10:50:24 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hvjkF-0005G4-3H for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 08 Aug 2019 10:50:23 -0400 Received: from sender4-of-o53.zoho.com ([136.143.188.53]:21344) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hvjkE-0005Fh-H2 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 08 Aug 2019 10:50:23 -0400 In-reply-to: <72f51f57-3d1a-15f3-458b-cf036841c15a@crazy-compilers.com> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Hartmut Goebel Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Hi Hartmut, > Assume some program, shell-script, whatever is calling an external progra= m. > What is the correct way to reference this? Shall it become an absolute > path, or just the basename. this depends on what the user may reasonably expect from the script. If it=E2=80=99s a core feature of the tool then I would expect to be able to u= se it without having to manually install other packages. If it=E2=80=99s a rare or optional feature it could be fine to use the base= name and assume that the user has the tool installed. Generally, I try to make sure that required tools are either propagated or that references to tools are made to absolute file names. There is no hard rule. --=20 Ricardo