Re: recutils bash builtin, readrec

[Platoxia <platoxia@protonmail.com>]

> I've been playing around with recutils in bash scripts and came across the bash builtin, readrec, in the recutils info docs. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get readrec to work.
> 
> In trying to get this to work I've attempted the command, enable readrec.so readrec, as per the manual without success. I checked my system and readrec.so does exist, although I don't have any idea about whether there is something I need to do for the path to make it work. I also came across this old thread in the guix-devel archive, https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-10/msg00665.html and checked recutils with guix edit recutils and it appears that the bash header fix was implemented. To be fair, though, I really don't understand Scheme so I can't be sure and I also can't seem to get readrec to work on Parabola, which I also don't know much about...
> 
> At any rate, this isn't critical and I wouldn't want anyone who is already busy on other Guix work to be distracted by this. That said, if anyone happens to be using recutils and has the readrec bash builtin working I would appreciate any advice on getting it to work on my system.

After some more searching I found this thread https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-recutils/2015-10/msg00002.html that has the answer buried somewhere within. The recutils manual says to use the command 'enable readrec.so readrec' when it should be 'enable -f readrec.so readrec'...the '-f' option was left out in the manual. Furthermore, for GuixSD the full path to readrec.so is required. In my case, a simple 'updatedb' followed by 'locate readrec.so' did the trick.  The correct command should look something like this, for anyone who is interested:

$ enable -f /gnu/store/<hash>-recutils-1.7/lib/bash/readrec.so readrec

Leo Famulari did all the work on this but I couldn't find any info other than what was in the mailing lists. At any rate, it now works on my GuixSD installation and hopefully this posting will help get the info out (even though it is in another mailing list).

For what its worth, I sent in a bug report to recutils for the needed corrections to the manual.

Platoxia