Re: [PATCH] Add scratch

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hi Nicolas,

Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> skribis:

> The following patch adds Scratch to the Guix packages.

Woohoo, nice work!

> There are some caveats:
>
> - it is not the latest version of scratch (1.4 instead of 2.0) as this
>   one required Adobe Air for the offline editor and Flash plugin online.

Yeah.  :-/

> - it freezes when returning from fullscreen execution of a script. Note
>   that the same happens with the Debian package, so there's probably
>   little I can do.

OK.

> - the installation merely copies Scratch.image, which is an image of the
>   VM. It is not a binary blob. You can inspect and modify code from
>   within the application. See
>   <https://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/Scratch_1.4_Source_Code> for details.

I’m not too familiar with Smalltalk, but still, a VM image is a binary,
right?  It’s a binary that may contain source code, but it’s a binary.
Can it be reproduced?

> - "/usr/share/scratch" directory is hard-coded. As a consequence Scratch
>   cannot find translation files or artwork. You can still import artwork
>   from the store directory but it is not a great out-of-the box
>   experience.
>
>   I notified the issue to the developers
>   (https://github.com/LLK/Scratch_1.4/issues) but, considering other
>   issues there are years old, I have little hope about it.
>
>   If there's an idea on how to fake the "/usr/share/scratch" directory,
>   I'm all ears.

It’s hard-coded in the VM image, right?  If we could rebuild the VM
image “from source”, then we could easily change this file name.

Otherwise we probably have to fiddle with the binary, but since our own
directory name is going to be longer, this is probably not possible.

Some minor comments:

> +    (description "Scratch is an easy, interactive, collaborative
> +programming environment designed for creation of interactive stories,
> +animations, games, music, and art -- and sharing these on the web.

For an em dash, write “art---and sharing” (info "(texinfo) Conventions").

> +    (home-page "http://scratch.mit.edu")
> +    ;; Source is GPL2 licensed, Plugins are MIT licensed and Artwork (sprites,
> +    ;; backgrounds, sounds...) is CC-BY-SA3.0 licensed.
> +    (license (list license:gpl2 license:x11 license:cc-by-sa3.0))))

So GPLv2-only and X11 (not Expat), right?  Just to make sure.  :-)

> diff --git a/gnu/packages/patches/scratch-desktopfile-semicolon.patch b/gnu/packages/patches/scratch-desktopfile-semicolon.patch
> new file mode 100644
> index 0000000..b013193
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/gnu/packages/patches/scratch-desktopfile-semicolon.patch

Please add a line at the beginning of the patch to explain what it does
and what its upstream status is.

Other than that it looks great.

Thanks!

Ludo’.