Re: [PATCH] Add 'guix hash'.

[Ludovic Courtès]

Nikita Karetnikov <address@hidden> skribis:

>> Could you copy/paste the --format option found in (guix scripts
>> download)?
>
> I changed it a bit.
>
> (By the way, I'd like to add your copyright to the header of 'hash.scm'.
> What year should be used?)

2012, 2013

>>> Should we capitalize error messages?
>
>> No (info "(standards) Errors"): [...]
>
> OK, I prepended 'guix hash' to all messages.  I'd like to change other
> commands (e.g., 'guix download') accordingly.  What do you think?

I think it’d be nice to have a ‘warning’ procedure in (guix ui), so
things are uniform.  Furthermore, ‘guix-main’ could do:

  (parameterize ((current-script-name arg0))
    ...)

so that ‘warning’ and similar procedures could pick up the program name
from there.

Would you like to work on this, in a separate patch?

> I also want to change the output of 'guix download --help'.  In
> particular, I'd like to specify the supported formats and remove
> (default: `nix-base32').  Basically, I want it to look like the output
> of 'guix hash --help'.

I was thinking that it might be enough to list the supported formats in
the manual, and not in --help, which should remain concise.  WDYT?

>> Also, could you add an entry in the manual (with a couple of sentences
>> explaining when users should care about this tool, and what it does), as
>> well as a line in po/POTFILES.in?
>
> Done.  But what is a translatable string?  Is it a string that should be
> i18n'd?

Yes, introduced by a call to the ‘gettext’ procedure, of which ‘_’ is an alias.

> address@hidden Invoking guix hash
> address@hidden Invoking @command{guix hash}
> +
> +The @command{guix hash} command computes the cryptographic hash of a
> +file.

I would add something like: “It is primarily a convenience tool for
anyone contributing to the distribution: it reports the hash of a file,
as appears package definitions (@pxref{Defining Packages}).”

You could add an xref from “Defining Packages” too.

> address@hidden hash} is a convenient tool to check the integrity of a
> +file.  For example, it can be used to compute the hashes of bootstrap
> +binaries.

I would remove this paragraph.

> +There is also @code{guix download} which computes the hash of a remote
> +file.

I’d remove this sentence, and instead we should add a node for
guix download too (patch welcome! :-)).

Modulo these minor details, it looks good to me.

Thanks!

Ludo’.