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From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?=)
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] gnu: Add octave and dependencies
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 22:26:02 +0100
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In-Reply-To: <20140129082015.GA24787@jocasta.intra> (John Darrington's message
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To: John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au>
Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org, John Darrington <jmd@gnu.org>

John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au> skribis:

> On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 10:11:14AM +0100, Ludovic Court??s wrote:
>
>      > Ok.  Andraes' and Ludo's explanations convince me.  However I'm sk=
eptical that
>      > the Octave devs would be quite so convinced.  And removing the pro=
pagates-inputs
>      > will mean patching to the Octave source and I don't know how diffi=
cult this will be.
>=20=20=20=20=20=20
>      The patch that would be great upstream is:
>=20=20=20=20=20=20
>        AC_PATH_PROG([MAKEINFO], [makeinfo])
>        AC_SUBST([MAKEINFO])
>=20=20=20=20=20=20
>      and then use ???@MAKEINFO@??? wherever ???makeinfo??? is expected in=
 the source
>      (similarly for ???less???, etc.)
>
>      Ludo???.
>
> Having thought about this some more, looked to see what is currently in t=
he=20
> octave source and "discussed" the issue on #octave I think now the best s=
olution
> is to simply remove all the propagated-inputs from the package (and leave=
 inputs
> and native-inputs as they are).  Rationale:
>
> * Octave "works" without all these programs (albeit in a rather featurele=
ss=20
>   fashion).  If a user wants to add the feature, then she just needs to=20
>   guix package -i <foo>.
> * It seems to have been a deliberate decision by the octave developers to=
 rely=20
>   on $PATH to select the appropriate version of these external programs.
> * Changing this behaviour would involve alterations to the octave source =
touching=20
>   many files, and I think upstream would be unlikely to cooperate with us.

Item #2 is definitely a good reason to leave things untouched (no
propagation, no patching.)

> The disadvantage of this approach is, that a guix user who installs octav=
e, but=20
> not the other packages, gets only a barely functional version.  Perhaps w=
e need=20
> a (recommended-inputs `(...)) like in debian.

Yes, that would make sense.

Could you file this to bug-guix@gnu.org (with the =E2=80=98wishlist=E2=80=
=99 tag, if you
master Debbugs)?

TIA,
Ludo=E2=80=99.