Re: v2: A proposal of a consistent set of clear rules and guidelines involving snippets, phases and patches.

[david larsson]

On 2022-08-05 15:59, Maxime Devos wrote:

[..]

> 20.4.5.3 Fixing technical issues (compilation errors, test failures,
> other bugs ...)
>
> Usually, a bug fix comes in the form of a patch copied from upstream
> or another distribution. In that case, simply adding the patch to the
> 'patches' field is the most convenient and usually does not cause any
> problems; there is no need to rewrite it as a snippet or a phase.
>
> If no ready-made patch already exists, then choosing between a patch
> or a snippet is a matter of convenience. However, there are two things
> to keep in mind:
>
> First, when the fix is not Guix-specific, it is strongly desired to
> upstream the fix to avoid the additional maintenance cost to Guix. As
> upstreams cannot accept a snippet, writing a patch can be a more
> efficient use of time. Secondly, if the fix of a technical issue
> embeds a store file name, then it has to be a phase. Otherwise, if a
> store file name was embedded in the source, the result of 'guix build
> --source' would be unusable on non-Guix systems and likely also
> unusable on Guix systems of another architecture.

There may be other reasons to add patches:

1. Functionality, that is not yet accepted upstream, because 
maintainer(s) do not have enough time to review all pull requests, or 
are simply slow to review. "if no response within X time from upstream, 
then guix may include your patch" might be a good policy here.

2. Bug fixes - as you mentioned - for such, it might be good with a: "if 
no response within X time from upstream, then guix may include your 
bug-fix patch".

3. Unmaintained projects - sometimes there are packages that are nice to 
include but which may no longer be maintained by upstream, and a few 
patches could still make the package usable and nice to have for Guix 
users. IMO such packages should generally be accepted, including minor 
patches that enhances the package. Examples would include guile-bash, 
and maybe emacs-company-tern (not in guix, but might be nice to have). 
There are probably more examples.

Im not a guix maintainer, so maintaining above varieties of patches 
might not be feasible, but there are potential benefits, like maybe guix 
is just "nicer" than other distros because of it. Or it might have the 
opposite effect if the maintenance burden is too high. Guix should 
spread more to mainstream IMO, and being able accept patches that are 
"nice", would benefit that purpose.

Best regards,
David