From: "Jonathan McHugh" <indieterminacy@libre.brussels>
To: "Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>, "Sarah Morgensen" <iskarian@mgsn.dev>
Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Can we find a better idiom for unversioned packages?
Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2021 22:21:56 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <e0bee4f37f82da9fa8f8cd6bd47c7125@libre.brussels> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <8735qezrhl.fsf@gnu.org>
Hi Ludo,
Just checking:
Is Diffstatic a real tool? It wasnt quite clear to me (and I fancy finding a new diff tool).
====================
Jonathan McHugh
indieterminacy@libre.brussels
September 8, 2021 11:31 PM, "Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> Sarah Morgensen <iskarian@mgsn.dev> skribis:
>
>> Currently, there are about 1500 packages defined like this:
>>
>> (define-public sbcl-feeder
>> (let ((commit "b05f517d7729564575cc809e086c262646a94d34")
>> (revision "1"))
>> (package
>> [...])))
>>
>> I feel like there are some issues with this idiom (in no particular
>> order):
>
> I’m late to the party but I’ll complement previous answers. :-)
>
>> 1. When converting between this idiom and regularly versioned packages,
>> the git diff shows the whole package changing because of the indentation
>> change.
>
> One can use ‘git diff -w’ to work around that (or the newfangled
> Diffstatic tool.)
>
>> 3. Packages inheriting from it lose the definitions. For actual fields,
>> we have e.g. `(package-version this-package)`, but we have no equivalent
>> for these.
>
> Right, these pieces of information are not “first-class”, except in the
> ‘git-reference’ record (or similar) for the commit ID. Do you have
> examples in mind where it’s insufficient?
>
> [...]
>
>> 5. The closest thing we have to a standardized way of generating
>> versions for these packages is `(version (git-version "0.0.0" revision
>> commit))`. We can do better than that boilerplate.
>
> I can sympathize with the feeling, but I’m not sure what to do. A
> ‘vcs-version’ record as Maxime proposes seems a bit overkill to me (and
> it would probably have an impact on performance, build times, and
> whatnot.)
>
>> 6. Not a direct complaint, but I feel like the overall package interface
>> was designed before straight-from-vcs unversioned packages were so
>> common, and so this idiom developed organically to work around that.
>
> Sure, though “straight-from-vcs” and “unversioned” are two different
> things: I’m fine with the former, but the latter equates to upstream
> telling its users “go find a revision that works for you”. I think
> releases still make sense for any non-trivial piece of software.
>
> As noted in the manual (info "(guix) Version Numbers"), packages built
> from arbitrary commits were supposed to be exceptional. Perhaps the
> reason we’re having this conversation now is that development practices
> are evolving towards what looks like chaos. :-)
>
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-09-08 22:22 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 34+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-08-31 19:57 Can we find a better idiom for unversioned packages? Sarah Morgensen
2021-08-31 21:20 ` Maxime Devos
2021-09-01 12:11 ` Xinglu Chen
2021-09-01 16:29 ` Maxime Devos
2021-09-01 13:33 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2021-09-01 16:39 ` Maxime Devos
2021-09-01 18:34 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2021-09-02 14:09 ` Maxime Devos
2021-09-02 14:20 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2021-09-02 14:34 ` Maxime Devos
2021-09-01 19:48 ` Jonathan McHugh
2021-09-01 21:47 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2021-09-02 13:32 ` Maxime Devos
2021-09-02 7:53 ` Jonathan McHugh
2021-09-02 9:25 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2021-09-01 10:55 ` Xinglu Chen
2021-09-01 15:37 ` Leo Famulari
2021-09-01 16:50 ` Xinglu Chen
2021-09-02 16:51 ` Leo Famulari
2021-09-02 17:29 ` Leo Famulari
2021-09-03 16:11 ` Xinglu Chen
2021-09-03 16:35 ` Leo Famulari
2021-09-03 16:57 ` Leo Famulari
2021-09-03 20:03 ` Xinglu Chen
2021-09-04 21:00 ` Leo Famulari
2021-09-08 21:15 ` Ludovic Courtès
2021-09-02 17:08 ` Leo Famulari
2021-09-08 21:28 ` Ludovic Courtès
2021-09-08 22:21 ` Jonathan McHugh [this message]
2021-09-08 22:38 ` Leo Famulari
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2021-09-03 5:51 Sarah Morgensen
2021-09-03 21:14 Sarah Morgensen
2021-09-03 22:11 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2021-09-04 12:32 ` Taylan Kammer
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