Re: [PATCH] gnu: Add higan.

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

taylanbayirli@gmail.com (Taylan Ulrich "Bayırlı/Kammer") skribis:

> Some things to note about this package & questions:
>
> - There's no official VCS repo and the author doesn't want automated
>   tools to download files from his homepage; there's an unofficial git
>   repo at GitLab but I found it unsuitable so I'm hosting the sources
>   specifically for Guix at GitHub now:
>
>   https://github.com/TaylanUB/higan

In what sense is it unsuitable?  It’s OK to have a couple of patches,
but it’s not quite OK to host a fork of the upstream package, IMO (at
the very least, it can create confusion and make it harder to see how it
differs from the “real” package.)

> - I forgot if there's a guideline for this: the release versions are
>   called 'v097', 'v098' etc. with always a 'v' in front.  Should that
>   'v' appear in the version field of the package or should it be
>   stripped?

I’d strip it.

> - As seems to be tradition among emulator developers, the build system
>   and the program's handling of the file system are a big pile of poo,
>   so:
>
>   * Is it principally OK to reuse the standard `build' and `install'
>     phase procedures a second time, just with the CWD changed, as I do
>     here?

It’s OK, though I often find it clearer to use
‘with-directory-excursion’ so that we can more easily reason about the
current directory.

>   * The program insists on looking in ~/.local/share for some data files
>     that are actually installed in $prefix/share; does my strategy here
>     look OK, in that I wrap the executable to copy the data files into
>     ~/.local/share every time the program is run?

Sounds like a sledgehammer no?  :-)

If those files are immutable, what about patching Higan to look for
those files in $datadir instead?

Thanks, and sorry for the delay!

Ludo’.