Re: hard dependency on Git? (was bug#65866: [PATCH 0/8] Add built-in builder for Git checkouts)

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi wolf,

wolf <wolf@wolfsden.cz> writes:

[...]

>> Personally, I do not have a strong opinion about the Big Plan™.  I note
>> that the introduction of Git as a hard dependency is a slippery slope
>> considering the current state of libgit2.  Here, it starts with “git
>> clone”, then “git gc” (unsupported by libgit2) is also in the pipes
>> (#65720 [1]).  And after timing, I am almost sure that many operations
>> using Guile-Git will be slower than their plain Git counter-parts.  And
>> we will start to parse the output of ’git’ plumbing commands.
>
> If you don't mind me asking, why is that so problematic approach?  Git's
> plumbing commands are intended to be used in scripts, so I am unsure what the
> problem is.

In the grand scheme of things (pun intended), we'd like every
programming to be feasible via nice Scheme APIs, which is what Guile-Git
provides to work with git repositories.  The appeal is to have a single
language to rule them all, reducing friction among Guix contributors.
The alternative here is to have an API reduced to invoking system
commands with string arguments, which is less expressive and lacks
elegance.

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim