Re: make packagers life easier

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

Tomáš Čech <address@hidden> skribis:

> Stop after/before phase
> =======================
>
> What it can help with?
>
> - download sources of package without constructing URL
> - prepare sources for creating or applying patch

I think ‘guix build -S foo’ does exactly that, doesn’t it?

> - when preparing configure parameters you can stop right after
>  configuration phase
>
> How to implement?
> - inject always failing phase into phases list

I’d like to read what others think because I’m probably biased, but my
first reaction is that (1) I’ve rarely if ever felt the need for this,
(2) adding a failing phase is easy to do by hand, and (3) it would be
hard to implement this generically currently (phases are not exposed.)

> Ommit developed package from generations
> ========================================

Hmm, what do you mean?  For a package to end up in your profile, you
have to explicitly install it.  So I’m really not sure what you mean
here.

> When I work on packages I have to take care of handling generations
> even when I don't care. It complicates removing old package builds
> using `guix gc -d' and it is unwanted burden.

I rarely do ‘guix gc -d’; I rather let the GC collect garbage by itself,
once it a while.  :-)

> Improve output of the build
> ===========================
>
> What I miss?
>
> Mostly one particular and obvious thing - after successful build print
> the path of newly created store in well visible, easy-to-mouse and
> easy-to-parse way.

Successful ‘guix build’ invocations always print the resulting file
name(s) as the last line(s) to stdout, such that one can always do
things like:

  ls $(guix build foo)

Is it what you want, or did you mean something else?

Thanks for the suggestions!

Ludo’.