Re: proposal: with-file-writeable

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Gábor Boskovits <boskovits@gmail.com> skribis:

> the make-file-writeable function seems a bit too imperative to me, it would
> look better if we could have a with-file-writeable function, so that we can
> constrain the size effect, and more. Moreover if a file is read-only to
> start with, it might be a good idea to keep it that way anyways. WDYT?

Now that I found the function in (guix build utils) (thanks for guiding
me!), I see what you mean.  ‘make-file-writable’ is imperative, true,
but I’d say that file system operations are imperative in nature.

A ‘with-file-writeable’ form would give a false sense of “containment” I
think.  Contrary to what the name suggests, its effect would *not* be
limited to the dynamic extent of its body, in the current thread;
instead, the effect would be globally visible on the system.

Last, the style of (guix build utils) is a lesser concern in a way
because its primary use case is package builds.  All this code is
“plumbing” and mostly imperative.

So, all in all, I’d rather keep it this way.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.