Re: Packaging Inferno

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Diego,

Sorry for the delay!

Diego Nicola Barbato <address@hidden> skribis:

> Nils Gillmann <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Ludovic Courtès transcribed 1.9K bytes:
>>> Hello Diego,
>>> 
>>> Diego Nicola Barbato <address@hidden> skribis:
>>> 
>>> > I have written a package definition for Inferno and I would like to know
>>> > if it would make sense to add it to Guix.  I am asking because I am not
>>> > sure if it is compatible with the FSDG (bundled fonts, trademarks, ...)
>>> > and if it would be of any use to anyone.
>>> 
>>> Removing the proprietary(?) fonts like you did sounds like the right
>
> @Ludo:  The fonts I removed are copyright Bigelow & Holmes.  They are
> licensed in a way that forbids them from being modified and distributed
> except as part of Inferno (or software derived from Inferno) [1].

OK, good.

>>> thing to do.  As for trademarks, please see
>>> <https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html#trademarks>
>>> to determine whether there’s a problem at all.
>
> @Ludo:  Judging from the link there seems to be no problem with the
> trademarks after all.  The bundled fonts (the ones I did not remove),
> however, are provided in a format native to Inferno (and Plan 9) and can
> not be rebuilt from source, which might be a problem according to this
> [2] thread.

Sometimes TTF files are considered source, so it really depends.  Unless
there’s evidence that there exists another source for these fonts, I’d
say we can assume it’s fine, possibly with a comment.

Do you know whether other FSDG distros and Debian provide these fonts?

>>> Could you also check whether all the code is GPLv2+ like the ‘license’
>>> field suggests?
>
> @Ludo:  According to the NOTICE files scattered through the source tree
> and the Inferno home page [3] different parts of Inferno are licensed
> under GPLv2+, LGPLv2+, Expat (MIT-template), Lucent Public License 1.02
> and Freetype.
> Am I right to assume that I have to mention all of them in the ‘license’
> field even though the NOTICE in the root of the source tree [4] says
> that the "collection" is governed by the GPLv2+?  

Yes, but you can leave a comment explaining that the combined work is
effectively GPLv2+.

> I could not find the Lucent Public License [5] in the (guix licenses)
> module.  Should I add it or should I use ‘non-copyleft’?

You can use ‘non-copyleft’ in that case, with a reference to
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#lucent102>.

Note that the page above says that the Lucent PL is incompatible with
the GPL.  Are we combining GPL code with Lucent code here?

>>> Do I get it right that the build result is a script that launches
>>> Inferno as a GNU/Linux process?  It seems like it could be useful.
>
> @Ludo: That is right.  I got the script from here [6].  It starts the
> window manager and logs in as the current user; it is supposed to
> provide a convenient entry point to start exploring the system.
> Alongside this script in %out/bin/ there is also a symlink to the emu
> binary which is installed by ‘mk install’ under
> %out/usr/inferno/Linux/386/bin/ (Linux/arm/bin on arm machines).  This
> directory contains several other executables.  I am considering making
> some of them (like the Limbo compiler) available under %out/bin in the
> same way as emu. 

Sounds good.  Note that, if possible, we should stick to the usual file
system layout (that is OUT/share, OUT/lib, OUT/bin, etc. and not
OUT/usr.)  Though if keeping the /usr/inferno layout style is really
important, we can make an exception.

> @Ludo:  My first attempt at writing the package definition used
> ‘gnu-build-system’. I switched to ‘trivial-build-system’ when I realised
> that most phases in %standard-phases were ill suited for building
> inferno.  I will try to rewrite the definition using ‘gnu-build-system’.

OK.  Note that you can always remove the unnecessary phases.

>>> >              ;; build mk
>>> >              (invoke "./makemk.sh")
>>> 
>>> It would be ideal if we had a separate package for ‘mk’ (I suppose it
>>> can run on POSIX systems, right?).
>
> @Ludo:  This is Plan 9's mk (their version of make), which, I believe,
> can run on POSIX systems.  Though, if we were to add mk to Guix, i would
> rather package the one provided by Plan 9 from Userspace [7] since that
> project seems to be more active than Inferno.

OK.  That can be done separately if you prefer, in which case just leave
a TODO comment about the packaging of mk from Plan 9 from Userspace.

Thanks for your reply!

Ludo’.