Re: string-append plus package

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

Hartmut Goebel <address@hidden> skribis:

> To make GuixSD successful – and not just another marginal distribution –
> guix must support users and administrator to do there job. Otherwise
> they will stay with other distributions. Administrators are typically
> short in time and they are not programmes. If they are programming, they
> are used to bash, perl, python and other imperative languages. Maybe
> they have some experiences with tools like puppet or ansible, which
> introduce some declarative paradigm.

[...]

> If now guix is inconsistent to use (see below), or uses some "magic", or
> is complicated to learn, administrators will abstain from GuixSD.
>
> So the road to success is based on on simplicity, consistency and no magic.

Agreed!

> ATM, system declarations are *not* consistent: While in a package
> description (gnu/packages/*.scm) and in service definitions
> (gnu/service/*.scm) one can use "(string-append PACKAGE …)", this does

Not sure what you mean: (string-append PACKAGE STRING) never works if
PACKAGE is a package object.

> *not* work in system declarations (gnu/system/examples/*.tmpl). From an
> administrators point of view, there is no reason for this different
> behaviour. it's plain confusing.
>
> Adding on this: I took two weeks (not counting the delay caused on my
> side) to get a working answer for the simple question in this thread.
> Imagine some admin trying ot GuixSD and being delayed that long. He/she
> will just stop evaluating GuixSD.
>
> If GuixSD should become successful, you need to change this.

Agreed, except on one point: “we” instead of “you”.  It’s a
collaborative effort and no single person can “get it right” and fix
every single issue.

User experience feedback like this is crucial if we are to improve
things.

As a “fisherman” like you wrote, there are many issues that I don’t even
notice.  Reporting how the tool fails to meet your expectations like you
did is the first step towards improving it.  It may be obvious to you
that something is broken here, but it was not obvious to me until you
described your expectations.

So, thanks for helping out!

Ludo’.