Re: New build system: copy-build-system

[Jack Hill]

On Sun, 26 Jan 2020, Jesse Gibbons wrote:

> On Sun, 2020-01-26 at 21:27 +0100, Pierre Neidhardt wrote:
> >         Error verifying signature: Failed to execute gpg.
> > Hi!
> >
> > We've got quite a few packages that simply copy some files from their
> > source to the output.  Examples include `debian-archive-keyring`,
> > `0ad-data`, `gcide`, or `rofi-pass`.
> >
> > Those packages end up being tedious to write because we need to rely
> > on
> > the trivial-build-system, also known as "the least trivial of them
> > all!" :)
> >
> > What about adding a "copy-build-system" which has one argument, say
> > an
> > `#:install-plan` that takes a list of source-destination pairs?
> >
> > This would drastically simplify the definition of the aforementioned
> > packages, basically summing up dozens of boilerplate lines into an
> > effectively trivial file mapping.
> >
> > If this sounds like a good idea, I'd be happy to send a patch!
> >
> > Cheers!
> That would be great!

I agree that this would be great as well. In addition to tedium, 
trivial-build-system can make modifications to package definitions, which 
I consider a really cool guix feature and a win for software freedom, 
more tricky. See 
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2019-12/msg00139.html for an 
issue I had with it (sorry Marius, I haven't had time to play with 
switching the build system of matcha-theme, but it's still on my todo list 
:)).

Best,
Jack