Re: Can we find a better idiom for unversioned packages?

[Liliana Marie Prikler]

Am Donnerstag, den 02.09.2021, 16:09 +0200 schrieb Maxime Devos:
> > > > > > 2. We cannot get at the source location for the definition
> > > > > > of
> > > > > > 'commit' or 'revision'.  This would be useful for updating
> > > > > > these
> > > > > > packages with `guix refresh -u`.  There is a proposed patch
> > > > > > [0]
> > > > > > to
> > > > > > work around this, but it *is* a workaround.
> > > > Other versioning idioms would also be workarounds, wouldn't
> > > > they?
> > > > 
> > > > > > 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.
> > > > What purpose would extracting those serve however? 
> > > 
> > > Not losing the revision is useful for things like 
> > > <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/50072>;;, to be able to determine
> > > the old
> > > revision.  (That's not about inheriting packages though.)
> > Isn't that addressed by addressing the second point, though?  Like,
> > if
> > you know the source location of the revision, you can read it back
> > to
> > get the value itself (or possibly even access it as-is), no?
> 
> Indeed!  The patch [0] addresses the second point.  With that patch,
> the proposed <extension-version> isn't required.  But also: some
> people (at least Sarah?) consider [0] a work-around, and if guix used
> something like <extended-version>, [0] wouldn't be necessary.
> 
> It doesn't really matter to me what we'll end up using in guix
> in the long term, though in the short term, I would like something
> like [0] to be merged, as it is used by the (not-yet submitted, needs
> some cleanup, testing & rebasing) minetest updater, and it makes
> <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/50072> work in more cases.
That's not quite my point.  Sarah said that "inheriting definitions"
loses those values, which is true regardless of the merge of [0].  What
you said to answer my question w.r.t. why that matters was to repeat
the second point, which is addressed by [0].  In other words, what I'm
asking is why specifically inheriting (as in record inheriting) is made
to be such a big deal that it deserves its own point when I would
personally argue that it is not at all that important.

Greetings