Re: v2: A proposal of a consistent set of clear rules and guidelines involving snippets, phases and patches.

[Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr>]

Hello,

Am Fri, Aug 05, 2022 at 03:59:14PM +0200 schrieb Maxime Devos:
> Here's a v2. I've changed the structure to something close to what Julien
> proposed, it looks a lot better now to me!

thanks, it does! I still find it a bit too verbose compared to Liliana's
suggestion, which I would prefer as a starting point of the discussion.

> 20.4.5.3 Fixing technical issues (compilation errors, test failures, other bugs
> ...)
> Usually, a bug fix comes in the form of a patch copied from upstream or another
> distribution. In that case, simply adding the patch to the 'patches' field is
> the most convenient and usually does not cause any problems; there is no need
> to rewrite it as a snippet or a phase.
> If no ready-made patch already exists, then choosing between a patch or a
> snippet is a matter of convenience. However, there are two things to keep in
> mind:
> First, when the fix is not Guix-specific, it is strongly desired to upstream
> the fix to avoid the additional maintenance cost to Guix. As upstreams cannot
> accept a snippet, writing a patch can be a more efficient use of time.
> Secondly, if the fix of a technical issue embeds a store file name, then it has
> to be a phase. Otherwise, if a store file name was embedded in the source, the
> result of 'guix build --source' would be unusable on non-Guix systems and
> likely also unusable on Guix systems of another architecture.

Do you mean "phase" here instead of "snippet"? That is what I usually do...
My practice is to use a patch when the goal is to eventually change the
source code upstream (or it is already changed upstream and we can take a
patch from their git repo, say), and a phase when one cannot expect upstream
to incorporate the changes since they are specific to Guix (like embedding
store paths, as Liliana writes, where apparently a phase is the only option
anyway).

Andreas