Re: Package file indexing

[zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com>]

Hi again, :-)

On Thu, 9 Jan 2020 at 13:55, Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> wrote:

> What I originally suggested is that we could equivalently do:
>
>   guix search "/foo.*bar" python-

[...]

> > Time to time, I am looking for header C file or latex style but I do
> > not know the path. I would like to have something like:
> >
> >   guix search gmsh.h
> > or
> >  guix search ieee*.sty
>
> That's OK, if you know the basename then "/gmsh.h" will match.
> If you only know a substring of the basename, then "/.*gmsh.h" will
> match too.

My point is just I do not like the key '/' to turn on the file-search
and I prefer "file:". As said elsewhere. :-)

Otherwise, I am on the same wavelength about you are proposing and it
is really cool!


> > IMHO, it should be included under "guix package", i.e.,
> >
> >   guix package gmsh --list-files
>
> Why not, but then this does not match the interface we have with "guix
> size".

Maybe we not not talking about the same thing.

What is the purpose of this "list-files" for you?

To me, it should return all the files of the package gmsh. For example
with Debian, when I install the package gmsh, the package manager adds
all these files [1].

[1] https://packages.debian.org/buster/amd64/gmsh/filelist

Nothing similar exists in Guix, right?
If yes, cool, please tell me. :-)
Because I am not aware of such thing, then I use "ls -l" and "which"
to locate them, which is not friendly.



> Could we also have "guix package gmsh --size"?  Would we deprecate "guix
> size" then?

No. It seems better to keep "guix size", IMHO.


> If not, then for the sake of consistency I'd prefer to have "guix list-files".

I think it is a bad idea to add another subcommand. Because it is not
so common, I guess.
Well, could you elaborate on what this "list-files" will do?


All the best,
simon