Re: Transformations Shell Syntax

[Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr>]

Hello,

Am Tue, May 23, 2023 at 01:24:00PM +0000 schrieb jgart:
> I was openly ideating on having shell syntax like we do currently for emacs-ement@0.9.3, for example, but for a subset of package transformation options as well.

I am a bit wary of too much intelligence in interpreting commands, at the
expense of clarity (also for the user - what do they really do?)

Right now, "guix build emacs-ement@0.9.3" means "build the package
emacs-ement at version 0.9.3, which is available somewhere in my
channels".

I think your semantics ends up meaning "try to make sense of the version
field, and give me the package at this version". This is actually quite
different - for instance, it means the package is not vetted by Guix
developers. So there may even be security implications.

In my opinion we should strive for simplicity in commands, it should
always be clear what a specific command line does and not depend on
context, and the guix tool should not second guess what we want to do
when invoking a given command.

Andreas