Re: Parameterized packages

[John Soo]

Hey all!

I’ve been following very roughly. I have a couple issues with parameterized 
packages. 

> On Jan 22, 2020, at 4:24 AM, zimoun <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Well, I am wanting the same thing: be able to modify the 'arguments'
> field but I am not convinced by the design you are proposing because I
> have the feeling that with such design then mess is coming. :-)

The maintenance and complexity does worry me.

Introducing more complexity may also make it harder to hack on guix itself. I 
love the hack ability of guix. (I correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t hack 
ability a core design goal of the project?)

The other worry is that command line flags are close to another way of coding 
package modifications in guile. Maybe it can be more scriptable but I do want 
the guile code itself to continue to be the nice and fun place it is to work 
on. I’d rather flags not be a replacement for scheme.

So to sum up: not only could command line parameters potentially make it harder 
to work on guix code it might disincentivize actually doing any hacking.  I 
think there could be very nice ways of implementing flags that improve guix 
overall. I jut want to keep in mind the design goals of the project. 

-  John