Re: How to get started in guile & programming generally

[tomas]

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On Sat, Sep 01, 2018 at 12:00:12PM +0200, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> 
> address@hidden writes:
> 
> > On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 11:42:51PM +0200, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> >> Joshua Branson <address@hidden> writes:
> >> > It gets really interesting when you start telling these processes to
> >> > transform the underlying data.  They currently have a translator that
> >> > translates an xml file into a directory tree.  Imagine searching an html
> >> > file with the "find" tool.  Wouldn't that be something different?
> >>
> >> Or imagine installing a packages from remote servers with shell globbing:
> >>
> >> pkg --install /http://ftp.gnu.org/packages/*/*.deb
> >>
> >> Last time I used the Hurd, some variant of this actually worked.
> >
> >   - Selecting packages by name via some string matching may have
> >     ummm... strange consequences ;-D
> 
> This as statement on its own is true, but does not invalidate the
> usecase [...]

Definitely. I was just thinking aloud about whether a regexp (or
glob pattern) match on package name makes sense as a selector...
for the install phase.

And as an illustration there was the confusion of my installer
stemming from the attempt to install everything *php*. Given a
sufficiently rich repository, you're bound to overwhelm pretty
much any dependency-tracking package manager.

For the search phase, though, matching package names on regexp
(or glob) is invaluable, I use it everyday. I think this is because
package names talk more to people than to computers.

> When something is not in a package repository, I typically need
> to first locate, then download and verify, and then install the
> package. With a transparent http translator, the locate and download
> step are no longer needed, and verification can be done transparently
> (since the signature is *next to* the file to install).
> 
> There are a lot of things which would get much easier this way. They
> would not become magic, but many unnecessary complications would
> disappear. The equivalent of ceremony in code, but on the sysadmin
> level.
> 
> And it would simplify the code: Why does mplayer/mpv need a mode to play
> from a URL? If we could simply play from a server via the filesystem,
> the tools we use could be simplified a lot.

This is another kettle of fish: it does sound attractive, but I fear
it'll take another couple of years to get our tiny brains there.

The basic idea sounds good, but the devil is, as they say...

(And yes, I'd love to see The Hurd gaining more traction!)

Cheers
- -- tomás
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