Re: A single reference to installed non-binaries

[Edouard Klein <edou@rdklein.fr>]

Hi !

I side-step this kind of things by adding a stage in package-y that will
find and replace all references to "bar" with the complete path to the
installation path of package-x, or that will set the needed environment
variable to the full path of the dependency.

See e.g.
https://gitlab.com/edouardklein/guix/-/blob/beaverlabs/beaver/packages/scheme-xyz.scm#L68

Here, xlsxio and tzdir will be expanded to their full install path in
the store.

It has the advantage of not needing to integrate any guix-realted stuff
in package-y, which I would consider an abstraction leak.

I hope this helps :)

Cheers,

Edouard.

Phil Beadling writes:

> Hi all,
>
> I have some platform independent files I have created a package for using
> copy-build-system.  This works great but I've come across situation I don't
> know how to handle.
>
> Let's call the package I've made package-x, and let's say that package-y
> (which is for arguments sake is a python build system) lists package-x as a
> propagated-input.
>
> package-x is installing a directory, let's say "bar" from the source into
> "share/foo/"
>
> '(#:install-plan '(("bar" "share/foo/")))
>
> Now whenever we install package-y, I should expect it's "share" directory
> to contain foo/bar - and I find it to be the case.
>
> No suprises so far.
>
> The problem comes when I want to reference a file under "bar" in the source
> code of package-y.
>
> Depending on whether I install package-y via "guix install package-y -p
> /path/to/profile" or via "guix environment --ad-hoc package-y" there is no
> single reference to the bar directory that covers every use-case.
>
> When I "install" the package - I can reference it using $GUIX_PROFILE
> But as for example a developer when I'm coding package-y I would reference
> it using $GUIX_ENVIRONMENT
>
> This means that any source that references it must presumably attempt to
> read it from $GUIX_ENVIRONMENT, and then on failure fallback to
> $GUIX_PROFILE.
>
> This feels a bit brittle to me, and I'm hoping I've missed a trick, and
> there's a better way to singluarly reference the location of a share
> directory from any GUIX profile or environment?
>
> Note the problem doesn't happen with binaries as the order of precedence in
> the PATH variable avoids the issue.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks,
> Phil.